I love to encounter recordings of such high quality
Maureen | 05/16/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is difficult music to pull off (I speak from experience, being an amateur violinist). The ensemble of this trio, the phrasing, and the really great intonation, combined with the quality of the recording make this CD a pleasure. This isn't really familiar Schumann, but it's worth augmenting your Schumann quintet and quartet music with these trios. (and if you don't have the qu-'s, you need to get them!)"
Delicious
David Saemann | 03/13/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The Schumann Piano Trios have always been a tough slog for me. I have recordings by the Grieg Trio and the Beaux Arts Trio, but I never felt like I could sink my teeth into them. For me, this album by the Vienna Brahms Trio was something of a revelation. The music is played as though for the benefit of the players only, and perhaps a few select listeners. There is no attempt to project it to a large hall. This approach works extremely well. The playing is relaxed, but with no loss of intensity or character. The episodic and intimate nature of these works is handled very well. I have a slight quibble with the sound engineering. The balance favors the string instruments, with the result that the piano is inaudible for stretches at a time. For all I know, this may be deliberate on the part of the players. In any event, this is a rare Schumann experience and typical of Naxos's high standards in chamber music recordings."
Overlooked Schumann in relaxed, genial readings
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 06/19/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"A group called the Florestan Trio surprised the classical music world in 1999 by making a prize-winning recording of Schumann's first two piano trios. Both works had been relegated to the shelf as second-rate, but with the right, totally committed performance, they can be brought off. Here at bargain price we get readings from the Vienna Brahms Trio that aren't dashing and incisive like the Florestan's, but they are genial and assured enough to make this neglected music appealing.
Both trios date from 1847, before the composer's tragic decline; Trio No. 3 Op. 110, being from the late phase, is a consideralby feebler work. Schumann doesn't find great melodic inspiration here, and both trios are lower-key than his great Piano Quartet and Quintet. I like the outer movements of the first trio very much, along with the hesitation waltz third movement of the second trio. The finale of the second trio has the piano and strings chasing each other, typical of the opening to the quintet, but again not as inspired.
In all, this is a nice way to hear Schumann in his gentler romantic vein at a modest price."
A Fine Performance
JohnL | Alexander, NC United States | 11/16/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The Vienna Brahms Trio play this beautiful chamber music of Schumann with great feeling. Both trios were written in the same year, 1847. But the Op.63 in D minor is a study in contrasts with the Op.80 in F major. The former has a melancholy feel to it, whereas the latter is a more sunny work. But both trios are rich with great romantic changes typical of Schumann. The recording is very good. I recommend this CD warmly, and at a bargain price."
HEART AND SOUL
DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 09/01/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"According to the liner note, the impetus behind the composition of Schumann's first two piano trios was the publication of the trio for the same combination by his wife Clara a year earlier. As it happens, my own collection has contained Clara's trio (on a disc with the trio by Fanny Mendelssohn) for a couple of years now, so I am renewing my acquaintance with Robert's trios while the work that sparked them off is still fresh in my memory.
In fact, I doubt that acquaintance with Clara's very agreeable and accomplished trio really makes any difference to one's appreciation of the works here. Robert Schumann's inspiration was deeply original, and Clara's barely detectable influence is nothing compared to the glaringly obvious impact that Schumann's trios had on Brahms. For me, Schumann is the most lovable of the great early romantics, but his interpreters often have to decide whether they will let his rather thick textures `speak for themselves' or whether they need a bit of lightening. The Vienna Brahms Trio here take the first option, and I would say rightly. Warmth of tone is usually more important in Schumann than artificial clarity, and the main reason for letting his works speak for themselves is that they have such marvellous things to say. The sound on this disc is what I think of as the authentic Schumann sound, and it is probably true to say that when his beloved piano is involved his instrumental sense improves for it.
Warmth of expression is more important still. This does not need to be `applied' by the executants because it comes from within the heart and soul of the music. I never find Schumann's lyricism overly sentimental, and to that extent all that his interpreters have to do is express it faithfully. Generalising roughly, I would say that these two trios express more of the dreamy `Eusebius' side of his personality than of the eager `Florestan', these being his own alternate personae that he thought up for himself. I find less difference between the works in the moods they express than the liner note writer does, but there is plenty of variety among the eight movements. What the artists bring to them is what they all need and call out for, namely sympathy and sensibility. I don't sense that there are, at least that there need be, any great problems regarding appropriate tempi. For the most part these seem to define themselves fairly obviously, but the Vienna Brahms Trio have a persuasive way with them and that is good enough for me. One particular gem in this respect is the gorgeous unhurried lilt they give to the rhythm in the third movement of the F major trio.
I suppose I could work through the successive movements picking out plums, but I don't feel like doing that because I don't think it's necessary or helpful. These performers have got these works right, both as complete entities and in detail, in my opinion. They offer me my beloved Schumann as I know and love him, which is obviously what I'm after. If forced to select just one specially felicitous touch, I would probably pick the high musical-box sequence from the first movement of the D minor.
The recordings are fin-de-siecle efforts from 1995. If you are particularly fastidious about recorded tone you could probably say that this tone is just a fraction short of 21st-century quality. For me that makes no difference, supposing I even agree, which I'm not sure I do. Any shortcoming to the tone is at least in the right direction for Schumann. And lastly - my all-but-inevitable tribute to Naxos. Here again we have imagination in the choice of the music, superlative quality in both execution and reproduction, and all at a people's price. What a jewel of a star Naxos are in the cultural firmament."
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1
