Trio Schubert Aut Dem Ström

Ms Hendricks has allied herself with one of the truly great pianists of the last thirty years, and a masterly Schubertian at that: Radu Lupu. His Schubert impromptus on Decca are to my mind only challenged by Brendel. I can’t remember hearing him as accompanist anywhere else, which makes his partnership with Barbara Hendricks special indeed. He doesn’t dominate the proceedings as some other soloists have tended to do but neither is he too reticent. It seems that they have found a good balance. Once or twice I reacted to his approach. Der Wanderer an den Mond seems too jolting but otherwise there are no eccentricities.

This collection of songs published in the year following Schubert’s death in 1828 is not a true cycle, nor were these pieces intended as a set by the composer. Even the title, which refers to the Romantic notion of a swan’s ability to sing one enchanting song only at its death, was assigned posthumously by the collection’s publisher. Nevertheless, all but one of these 14 deeply emotional songs (in the best Romantic tradition of desperation, lost love, longing, and wistful, painful remembrance) are set to the poems of two writers, Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine.

The Beaux Arts Trio was a noted piano trio, celebrated for their vivacity, emotional depth and wide-ranging repertoire. They made their debut on 13 July 1955, at the Berkshire Music Festival, Lenox, Massachusetts, United States, known today as the Tanglewood Music Center. Their final American concert was held at Tanglewood on 21 August 2008. It was webcast live and archived on NPR Music. Their final concert was in Lucerne, Switzerland on 6 September 2008.

The two works for piano trio included here represent extreme points in Schubert’s career as a composer. The Sonatensatz, a sonata movement, was written in 1812, while Schubert was still at school. The second of his two completed piano trios, D. 929, dates from 1827 and was played at the first and only public concert of Schubert’s compositions during his lifetime. While the Sonatensatz shows promise, at the very least, the Piano Trio in E flat major shows this promise fully realized.

This profound, yet still often light-hearted, E flat Trio was written in the same month (November) that Schubert completed Winterreise. We are instantly reminded of this in the Florestan's eloquent and aptly paced account of the C minor Andante con moto, with what Richard Wigmore describes as its 'stoical trudging gait'.