KORNGOLD; ZEMINSKY Piano Trios (Stefan Zweig Trio)

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Alexander von Zemlinsky, Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Genre:

Chamber

Label: Ars Produktion

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 60

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: ARS38264

ARS38264. KORNGOLD; ZEMINSKY Piano Trios (Stefan Zweig Trio)

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Piano Trio Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Composer
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Composer
Stefan Zweig Trio
Trio for Clarinet/Viola, Cello and Piano Alexander von Zemlinsky, Composer
Alexander von Zemlinsky, Composer
Stefan Zweig Trio
The coupling isn’t as common as you’d think, which is explained in part by the contradictory currents that were swirling around Vienna in the two decades surrounding 1900 but also those that filled the heads of these two impressionable young geniuses. Their two trios don’t sound as complementary as might be imagined. The 13-year-old Korngold’s Piano Trio is a long way from the satin fluency and cinematic cut-and-thrust with which the Viennese composer would make his name. There’s plenty of invention but some of it sounds received, not least in the stop-start opening Allegro, 11 minutes long.

Is it best to power through with impetus and edge – as the Stefan Zweig Trio do here – or try for something more noble and mahogany, as the Beaux Arts Trio’s classic recording does? That’s a tricky one but this ensemble’s decision to take the former approach seems like a wise one. Others might have revealed a little more of the Scherzo’s burlesque qualities but the ensemble isn’t tempted to over-indulge those occasional glimpses of art nouveau curvature in the same movement that probably aren’t ripe enough for full exploitation. Some of the long-held violin lines of the Larghetto might have benefited from a little more tempering of vibrato (both its intensity and the timing of when it kicks in, which seems pretty uniform) but that same intensity is a good fit for the pulsating finale.

While Korngold’s Trio tries to look forwards from 1910, Zemlinsky’s tries to look back from 1896. Zemlinsky set out to pay homage to Brahms but at least in his piece, originally a clarinet trio, he doesn’t overly check the flow of his compositional impulse, one reason this heaving performance feels that bit more right-on. If Brahms caused Zemlinsky problems, perhaps it was in the latter’s tendency to want to contain his density rather than spread it out. This is Zemlinsky no more fully fledged than its Korngold counterpart, but we do sense a composer starting to twist the kaleidoscope. It sounds, from their approach, like the Stefan Zweig Trio wish he’d twisted it even more.

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