Tchaikovsky Piano Trio

As a glance at the above will show, this is not the old Beaux Arts version, for whose restoration I made a plea two years ago, but a new digital account recorded with their new cellist, Peter Wiley and in a different acoustic The Maltings, Snape. In their old version they omitted the fugue (Var. 8), a practice sanctioned by the score (the Borodin on Chandos curiously enough, cut out the variation preceding it) but this time round the players restore it. However, they do make the traditional cut in the finale (bar 9 of page 86 to bar 4 of page 102 Eulenburg score).

It says much for the intelligence controlling this performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio that only the final return of the grand lament churns and heaves as so much of the playing elsewhere could so easily have done in the wrong hands. Throughout the long, generous first movement of Tchaikovsky’s memorial to Nikolai Rubinstein, Kempf reins in his grander manner to keep the argument on the move; French violinist Pierre Bensaid and Armenian cellist Alexander Chaushian may not be naturally big players, but they know how to spin a line and lift it when necessary into the higher life. Everything tells when it should, above all the one truly inspiring melody in Tchaikovsky’s most personal vein which eases the tension of a keenly sprung development and fades beautifully into the most sensitively handled coda I’ve heard on disc.

The second album by the popular piano trio "Tsubaki Trio". Their debut album "Mendelssohn & Brahms: Piano Trio No. 1" became a bestseller and was selected as "Record Geijutsu Magazine's Special Selection" for its lustrous and fragrant cantabile that touched the heartstrings of listeners. This album is a complete turnaround, featuring the masterpieces of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, who represent Russian music, and their profound and emotional ensembles are a stunning attraction.

Ideally, a piano trio should be balanced in its voices and the parts more or less equally matched in expression, but it sometimes happens in late Romantic chamber music that an overwrought piano part can create the opposite conditions. In the Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor by Sergey Rachmaninov and the Piano Trio in A minor by Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, the piano is clearly the dominant force, because it carries most of the thematic material, harmonic textures, and dramatic gestures, and thereby reduces the violin and cello to subsidiary roles.

The combination of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, with Anton Arensky's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32, is a common one, for the two works were both written as memorials to instrumentalists. Good recordings in the stereo era go back to one recorded by Yefim Bronfman, Cho-Liang Lin, and Gary Hoffman on Sony some years ago, but the present release can stand with such classics. The two trios share an unusual mix of passionate virtuosity and elegiac quality, as if to remember the powers of the deceased player. Tchaikovsky's trio is a massive work, clocking in at well over 40 minutes even at the brisk tempos at which it is taken here.

Ernest and persuasive while it's spinning, the better qualities of this 2006 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio dissipate soon after the disc stops. With pianist Yefim Bronfman, violinist Gil Shaham, and cellist Truls Mørk as partners in the proceedings, the playing itself is first-class. Each is a highly regarded virtuoso, and collectively they form an agile but cogent chamber ensemble. Interpretively, their focus is on expressivity.