Horn Trios

Brahms was a spirited, fair-haired youth of twenty-one when he composed his first chamber work, essaying the delicate art of the trio for piano and strings. The result was a masterpiece. Quartets, quintets, sextets followed… and many years went by before he returned twice more to the piano trio genre. The horn too was given its own trio, with a part that could be borrowed by the cello. The maturity and life experience he had gained left their mark over the years. The time had come for wisdom, gravity and nostalgia, while the inner passion and fire remained.

Théodore Dubois was a prominent French composer, organist, theorist, and teacher in the mid- to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but he is perhaps better remembered for a monumental deficit in judgment than for his music itself. He was a staunch conservative, and as director of the Paris Conservatoire, he refused to award the Prix to Rome to Maurice Ravel in 1905; the outpouring of consternation among the public and among musicians led him to resign his position.

George Wallington - Trios and Septet (1951) {Savoy Jazz ‎SV-0136 rel 1991}
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© 1949-51, 1991 Savoy Jazz / Nippon Columbia Japan | ‎SV-0136
Jazz / Bop / Piano

George Wallington's technique was huge. When he played, especially with a trio, he filled the space around him with tons of piano. He and his instrument were front and center. But over and above the sheer virtuosity was Wallington's profound joy in playing. Across the ten trio tracks on this Savoy CD, Wallington shares that joy with the listener, not only with his playing but with writing that brims over with melody and invention. Best known as the writer of Godchild, immortalized on Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool, on these tracks he contributes eight top-flight originals in a more purely bop vein.

One of most unusual Russian musicians, Arkady plays French horn, flugelhorn, alpenhorn and many more unusual wind instruments. A native of Moscow, at the age of six Arkady Shilkloper began playing brass instruments and studied flugelhorn at the Moscow Military Music Academy until 1974. From 1978 to 1985 he was a member of the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre and the "Bolshoi Brass Quintet". With this world-famous ensemble and as a member of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1989 he undertook numerous worldwide concert tours. Alongside with that he started playing traditional jazz with double-bass player Mikhail Karetnikov and avant-garde jazz in saxophonist Sergei Letov's band Three O (1985-1990). Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union Shilkloper has worked independently both as a solo performer and, since 1991, with Alperin and Starostin in the Moscow Art Trio and in other formations…

Given how often these chamber works by John Harbison are played in concert, it is somewhat surprising that this is the first CD to offer them on one program. At once highly abstract, completely accessible, and intensely personal, Variations and Twilight Music were written in the 1980s and have become classics in their own right, fitting comfortably alongside the likes of Bartók’s Contrasts and Brahms’ and Ligeti’s respective Horn Trios. Although both pieces on this recording were taken from live performances by the fine members of Spectrum Concerts Berlin, the sound is not compromised in the slightest.

A brilliant start and now the sequel on Vol. 2 with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's complete basset horn trios in arrangements by Ulf-Guido Schafer for trio d'anches. From the twenty-five individual movements - in part of quite enigmatic transmission - Schafer has put together two more highly entertaining divertimentos. Deeply moving excerpts from Cosi fan tutte form a dramatic contrast to the serenade tone of the trios. The trio d'anches consisting of an oboe, a clarinet, and a bassoon is actually a creation of the twentieth century. French composers in particular felt inspired by the homogeneous sound of this ensemble not unlike the sound of the human singing voice.

The 200th anniversary of Haydn's death arrived in 2009, and this mammoth box boasts one CD for every year that's passed! Well, not quite, but only a composer as prolific as this Viennese-classical master could even come close: 150 CDs of symphonies, concertos, operas, chamber music, oratorios and more beautiful music that have challenged performers and inspired composers for centuries.