Many hard things have been written by musicologists in recent years about Mendelssohn's two piano trios. Yonty Solomon, insert-note-writer as well as pianist of the group carrying his name, is of a different mind. ''An imperishable masterpiece'' is his evaluation of the D minor work, adding ''its deeply-felt sincerity, emotional intensity and spacious, elegant architectural proportions give the work a perfect balance and timelessness''. Though recognizing that the seriousness and quasi-religious flavour of the C minor work might lessen its immediate appeal, this, too, he hails as a ''composition of great stature''.
Such great respect for the music is reflected in the playing itself, and first of all in choice of tempo. Except for the two scherzos, both well up to average timing, this team opts for expansive- ness rather than dash. Since Mendelssohn qualifies each one of his allegro markings with indications ranging from molto assai to agitato, energico e con fuoco and appassionato, I did sometimes wonder if the composer himself might have liked just a little more urgency in some of these movements, and even, perhaps, a slightly swifter flow in the two slow movements, for which he requests nothing slower than andante. But every felicity of invention is so caringly considered and warmly felt that I think it's all to the good that the CD catalogue now has two representatives (the Borodins on Chandos are similar) of this more searching approach. I'd certainly never realized before what a wonderful lead into and start to the recapitulation Mendelssohn offers in the first movement of the D minor work.
Like the Solomon Trio's earlier coupling of Beethoven's two Op. 70 Trios (11/92), this one, too, was recorded ''without the constraints of a time-schedule'', in the acoustically sympathetic seventeenth-century Music Room of Highnam Court, near Gloucester. Tonal reproduction is mellow and true. And this time it was only occasionally that I felt Solomon's piano a little stronger than was good for Rodney Friend's violin in the softer regions of this artist's imaginatively varied tonal spectrum. Timothy Hugh's rich cello is a constant delight.'