Search - Franz Joseph Haydn, Jerome Hantai (piano), Philippe Couvert (violin) :: Haydn: Piano Trios No. 40 Op. 73 No. 3 (in F-sharp); Trio No. 37 Op. 71 No. 3 (in D); Trio No. 36 Op. 71 No. 2 (in E-flat)

More of the amazing Haydn trios

Michael Steinberg | Rochester, NY USA | 11/08/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Anchored by the beautiful sound of a large and sonorous fortepiano, these performances are almost as fine as the Levin/Beths/Bylsma trio on Sony. There's no duplication of the repertory: three more of Haydn's greatest and most personal works. Most extraordinary, perhaps, is the f sharp minor trio, the last of a set of three written for a widow in London with whom Haydn was in love. (He was, alas, still unhappily married.) The piece is almost stormy at times, closing with a minuet that, as Rosen says, is so deeply melancholy as to be indistinguishable from the tragic. In the center is the trio version of the slow movement from the Symphony No. 102 (nobody is sure which is the original)--in this form it has the intimacy and caressing ebb and flow of a conversation. It's hard not to hear the piece as a regretful, passionate love letter. The other two pieces are less intense, but just as fine. The late trios are among the greatest and most revelatory of Haydn's works, and the ones that seem to bring him closest to us. No music lover should miss them...."