Two discs from two Danish ensembles coincide to chart the history of the piano trio in the country from its arrival in the mid-1800s. The big cheese of 19th-century Danish music, Niels Gade, was among the first to pounce on it. Gade was a fine violinist (Schumann noted the link with his surname and the instrument’s four strings) but was not so hot on keys, which might contribute to the slightly heavy, stop-start feel that stalks his B flat Piano Trio (1863). We also hear the first movement of an aborted trio from 1839, planned as a programmatic piece based on a heroic adventure. Ironically, the narrative framework might have freed Gade up to worry less about thematic development – a benefit when his themes never quite have the directness of his chum Mendelssohn’s. A charming piece that feels more at ease with itself, though in both works Gade’s sturdy craftsmanship is clear.

In the self-effacing Peter Erasmus Lange-Müller you almost always hear something different: unusual harmonic glances, an attractive sense of hesitance and, in the case of his F minor Piano Trio (1898), a distinct French influence. The piece rises to a powerful climax in the last movement, Lange-Müller standing tall at last, shouting to be heard over the rest of them. Fans of the crazy Dane Rued Langgaard will recognise the music of Mountain Flowers (1908) as the basis for the second movement of his First Symphony. Good stuff, but Langgaard was right to recognise that the material suited broad orchestral clothing better. The piano takes prominence in the sound picture, which would be more frustrating were Katrine Gislinge’s playing not so full of fluency and tenderness.

Five living composers are represented on ‘Five Danish Piano Trios’, three of whom studied with Ib Nørholm, one of whom holidays with Ib Nørholm and one of whom is Ib Nørholm. The clearest link to Gade & Co is Svend Hvidfelt Nielsen’s Divertimento (1993), which could be a Romantic piano trio in modernist harmonic disguise; its sensitive ‘Elegy’ gets a touching, gentle performance from Trio Ismena, who probably have the edge on their compatriots in terms of tone and shading. We also get Jesper Koch’s Piano Trio (2011), based on shapes and games, and, from Nørholm himself, Trio No 3 (1999), lyrical and angular, its energy contained.

Lars Hegaard’s Like a Cube of Silence (2010) is direct and refreshing, like a structure whose parts you can see, music slightly apart from Denmark’s modernist establishment in expression yet absolutely sharing its clarity and openness. But the standout work comes from Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. He compiled his Moments musicaux (2006) from bits of Schubert, piling quotations on top of one another after he’d found that he’d ‘destroyed Schubert by cutting him up’. The result is typical of this composer’s new simplicity: jagged, playful, sometimes ugly, often unspeakably beautiful, always full of a natural, genre-less musical impulse. And when all’s said and done, Gudmundsen-Holmgreen does underline Schubert’s simple harmonic profundity, such as when the piano loops a sequence of chords from Schubert’s Moments in the last movement like an organ accompanying an Anglican psalm chant, stutterings and figurations typical of PGH fidgeting away up above. The piece is worth the price of the disc alone, and suggests that Nielsen’s legacy of individuality has eclipsed Gade’s ideas of conformity when it comes to Denmark’s most worthy 21st-century music.