Trio

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.

Canada's foremost piano trio, the Gryphon Trio, has a reputation for offering richly detailed performances and excellent ensemble work. This nine-disc set represents not only much of their best work, but also much of the best of the piano trio repertoire. There are six of Mozart's trios; all of Schubert's and Shostakovich's works in the genre; and highlights of Beethoven's, including the three Op. 1 trios, the Archduke and the Ghost trios, and the Op. 11 trio originally for clarinet, cello, and piano.

Starting from the magisterial trios of Beethoven and Brahms, clarinetist Daniel Ottensamer, cellist Stephan Koncz and pianist Christoph Traxler began a journey to explore the influences these works exerted on other composers. As they moved further and further away from their point of departure, their search took them through several centuries and across every continent and their project burgeoned into a comprehensive anthology. “Our initial idea was to juxtapose these mainstream works with contemporary pieces, but our work on this project eventually got so out of hand that there was no end to the works that we discovered for our ensemble,” Koncz explains. “In all of them the tonal variety of the clarinet and the interplay between the three instruments is explored in completely different ways.”