Trio Con Brio

"Kakadu Variations" is the nickname given to Ludwig van Beethoven's set of variations for piano trio on the theme "Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu" by Wenzel Müller. The Variations was published in 1824 as Opus 121a, the last of Beethoven's piano trios to be published. The work is notable for the contrast between its solemn introduction and the lightweight variations that follow.

This is definitely a Beethoven footnote, but an interesting one: two arrangements by the composer, one substituting a violin for the clarinet in his Clarinet Trio, the other reducing the Second Symphony to a Piano Trio. The violin version of the Clarinet Trio just seems like a compromise, and the piece misses the color of the clarinet. Paradoxically, trimming down the scoring of the Second Symphony results in a worthwhile alternate, in which listeners who know the Symphony well may be fascinated by the way the great composer attempts to reproduce his orchestral effects with smaller forces.

Sergey Taneyev was a distinguished pianist and influential educator, succeeding Tchaikovsky as professor at the Moscow Conservatory and counting Scriabin and Rachmaninov among his students. The Piano Trio Op. 22 is a demonstration of Taneyev’s technical skill, filled with subtle use of counterpoint, lyrical expressiveness and virtuoso fireworks. Alexander Borodin was a leading member of the ‘Mighty Handful’, and his incomplete but brilliant Piano Trio was seen by Glinka as setting a precedent in the genre for its deeply Russian character.

This second volume of miscellaneous chamber works contains all of the music that is not a formal quartet, quintet, or sextet. In includes the piano trios, the wonderful Terzetto for two violins and viola, works for solo instrument and piano, pieces for piano four-hands, and all of those little, undefinable works, some of which (such as the Bagatelles for two violins, cello, and harmonium) are magnificent.

This album concludes The Brahms Trio's five-volume survey of the piano trio in Russia with remarkable works by composers whose names have all but disappeared from the musical world's collective memory. Vladimir Dyck, a student of Widor at the Paris Conservatoire, took French nationality in 1910 but his life came to a tragic end when he and his family were arrested in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. His Piano Trio, Op. 25 contrasts Russian soulfulness with the lightness and deft scoring he brought to his film compositions. Constantin von Sternberg's genial Op. 104 reflects his career as a virtuoso pianist, while Sergey Youferov's expansive and nostalgic Op. 52 is a farewell to the Russian 'Silver Age', a world about to be destroyed by revolution.