Harpsichord Trios

The 1970s were heady years indeed for the Haydn collector, with complete recorded cycles of the symphonies, quartets and keyboard works and the first-ever recordings of many of the operas. Attracting less immediate attention than these boxed sets were the activities of the Beaux Arts Trio who, proceeding by stealth with one disc at a time, recorded Haydn's complete piano trios between 1970 and 1978.

Un rayon de soleil traverse l’azur du petit matin et réchauffe le cœur d’une douce caresse… Dès le premier mouvement (largo) du Trio en la Majeur, Sébastien Marq expose son jeu doux et velouté, léger et transcendant. Et l’on s’émerveille, béat, devant la beauté du son, la justesse des sentiments, et ce toucher si délicat qui vous berce et vous emmène dans un jardin d’Eden. Le voyage s’achève sur quatre mêmes notes, plus suaves et doucereuses que les précédentes.

This collection of Marais’ music was published in 1692 as “Trio Pieces for flutes, violins and dessus de viole,” the dessus being the second smallest of the viola de gamba family. (There was a pardessus de viole.) The notes here call this music “a totally different side of Marin Marais’ work,” for he composed these dance movements not for himself but for his companions, Read more à bec, which are accompanied variously by guitar or theorbo and harpsichord. I think it’s amusing to think of the king, any king, being enticed to sleep by dances, especially by such vigorous, cheerful stomps as the Bransle de village , but then there was little about France’s monarchs that wasn’t strange, and that little innocent dance is as appealing as anything here.

Federico Guglielmo whittles down his ensemble L’Arte dell’Arco to just three or four players for his latest release of Vivaldi’s music. Unlike other Vivaldi performers, Guglielmo is keen to return to the transparency of the Prete Rosso’s music, stripping away the ornate embellishments that have encumbered recent recordings, allowing the fluid lines to speak for themselves. In these Violin and Trio Sonatas, Guglielmo and his fellow musicians once again establish themselves as some of the foremost interpreters of the Italian’s music. For the most part bright and jolly, these sonatas demand to be played with charm and joie de vivre, which L’Arte dell’Arco certainly supply in abundance.

Four of Ignaz Pleyel’s Piano Trios are featured on this new release, interpreted by Trio 1790 on period instruments. Trio 1790 have recorded a critically acclaimed series of Haydn’s Piano Trios for Cpo and these trios by Pleyel, a former pupil and friend of Joseph Haydn, provide gallant melodies, dramatic harmonies and many tonal surprises.

Leopold Kozeluch enjoyed such an outstanding reputation already in 1781 that he received an offer from the Archbishop of Salzburg to succeed Mozart as court organist. Kozeluch's piano trios must have been very popular since more than sixty of them appeared in print from 1781 to 1810. The three trios presented here were published in 1798/99 and had been preceded by forty other such works by him. The special feature of these three piano trios lies in his use of melodies from Scottish folk songs in their middle and last movements. Toward the end of the eighteenth century the Edinburgh publisher George Thomson had the idea to have Viennese classical composers set Scottish, Irish, and Welsh folk songs to music with an accompaniment for piano, violin, and violoncello and contacted Haydn, Kozeluch, Pleyel, and (later) Beethoven in the hope of winning them for this project.