Zemlinsky, at 24, the Brahms imitator: Max Bruch, at 70, the Schumann imitator. Zemlinsky in 1895 was writing music at least 50 years more progressive than the music Bruch was writing in 1908. One way or the other, therefore, this disc hymns the persistence and adaptability of musical romanticism, and of conservative musical romanticism at that.
Bruch's eight pieces are emphatically not a passionate cry of nostalgia from a composer who abominated anything more modern than Schumann's instrumental miniatures. The music is for the most part gentle and easygoing (it was written for Bruch's clarinettist son) with moments of relative rhythmic agitation soon smoothed over. Only one piece, the seventh, aspires to consistent liveliness and humour. The forms are often long drawn out, but Bruch remained craftsman enough to avoid the impression of idle note-spinning. Despite an idiom well worn to the point of exhaustion, there is a real sense of purpose, undermined only by a lack of imagination in the piano writing: for example, the tremolandos in No. 8.
Zemlinsky's Trio, by contrast, has authentically Brahmsian symphonic breadth, especially in the dramatic outer movements. Both of these drive to powerfully tense endings, and the finale has a well-placed reminiscence of the work's opening in its concluding stages. The lyrical writing of the slow movement's outer sections is rather featureless, but the music comes to life again in the more agitated central episode, where the promise to be fulfilled in Zemlinsky's later symphonic and dramatic works is clearly announced.
Walter Boeykens is an expert clarinettist, whose woody tone blends well with both the viola and the cello. Robert Groslot is a competent pianist, strong yet disciplined in the Zemlinsky, and doing as much as can be expected with the more unrewarding pages of Max Bruch. I found it difficult to tame a harshness in the recording at higher dynamic levels.'