Trio His

AVID Jazz continues with its Four Classic Albums series with a finely re-mastered 2CD release from John Coltrane with The Red Garland Trio & Quintet.

Wolf-Ferrari was a composer of great artistic merit, Italian by nationality but raised in Germany, unfairly forgotten and deserving of rediscovery. His works meld compositional and spiritual elements with a preference for melodic purity and smooth harmonies, a passion for clear and linear forms inspired by Classical-era Vienna, and a meticulous approach. His aversion to complexity and his love of clarity and simplicity – as far removed from the operatic verismo movement as from the experiments of the avant-garde – meant he was, in a certain sense, an isolated figure, yet he knew that, despite the nostalgia in his writing, he had his own vibrant and original voice. His writing for strings displays expert compositional technique and a thorough technical knowledge of the instruments.

After sixteen years of exceptional achievement and vast critical acclaim, the career paths of the members of The Florestan Trio are diverging. Sadly, the trio will disband at the end of this year and this disc marks the end of their studio career. For their final recording, the trio performs an all- Shostakovich program comprising the two piano trios and the Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok, for which they are joined by soprano Susan Gritton. Written in 1923, the first trio was an astonishing achievement for a seventeen-year-old student.

Around a quarter of a century ago, scholars embarked upon fruitful research into composers active between the mid-19th century and the lead-up to World War One, many largely hitherto ignored by all but music historians, consisting of at least two generations who focused either on ‘absolute’ music (in central Europe) or music for the theatre (in Italy and France). Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917) was one such figure.

The two large-scale works by Dvořák and Smetana are complemented here by the one- movement Elegy, by Josef Suk, Dvořák’s student and later son-in-law. Formed in 2007, the Sitkovetsky Trio performs worldwide and has received numerous awards and critical acclaim, but is here making its début on disc, in a programme perfectly suited to the ensemble’s virtuosic and impassioned music-making.