The belated issue of recordings by the Wiener Schubert Trio, after Schubert (8/11) then Chausson, Debussy and Rachmaninov, continues with Pfitzner and Smetana in a coupling which is apposite and intriguing because these composers found maturity through this very medium.

His Cello Sonata excepted, the Piano Trio (1896) is Pfitzner’s first published work apart from songs. Its ambition is immediately evident in a densely wrought Allegro that fuses Brahmsian motivic ingenuity with Schubertian expanse; the more so in a slow movement whose halting progress is speculative, even ominous in import. Nor does its successor, an intermezzo rather than scherzo, afford any real lightening of mood other than a suave irony in its trio episodes. A taciturn introduction sets up the closing Allegro, its vehemence providing little emotional respite up to a coda whose turning fatalistically to the minor confirms its Brahms inheritance.

A more graphic fatalism pervades the Piano Trio (1855) by Smetana – not least the opening Moderato, its baleful rhetoric only passingly allayed with more consoling thematic elements while it pursues a combative development through to the anguished conclusion. As with the composer’s string quartets, the scherzo’s dance motion is tempered by more equivocal ideas which evoke a bittersweet poise, and though the hectic underlying motion of the final Presto attains a measure of affirmation, this feels not so much hard-won as reckless in its defiance.

Both works eschew false compromise, as do readings unstinting in their commitment and intent seriousness of purpose. That of the Pfitzner on MDG provides a more accommodating listen, whereas those of the Smetana on Supraphon and Simax yield more variety of expression, but these players undeniably have their measure with sound of unrelenting immediacy to match. Neither performance is aimed at the faint-hearted any more than, for that matter, is the music.