BRAHMS; LISZT; SCHOENBERG Works for Piano Trio

Snapshot of an artform in flux from Hamburg trio Boulanger

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Arnold Schoenberg

Genre:

Chamber

Label: Profil

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 59

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: PH11042

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Piano Trio No. 3 Johannes Brahms, Composer
Boulanger Trio
Johannes Brahms, Composer
Tristia Franz Liszt, Composer
Boulanger Trio
Franz Liszt, Composer
Verklärte Nacht Arnold Schoenberg, Composer
Arnold Schoenberg, Composer
Boulanger Trio
This disc holds compressed time: that unrepeatable period of a decade or two in German culture in which the good old rules swung on their hinges, once and for all to let in the light of a new and determined age, as yet uncertainly prophesied by these two grand masters of their game. They could not write the same piece twice, and their precocious heir, whose voice – in the words of Charles Rosen, ‘an acutely expressive one with a love for asymmetrical phrase and a flowing contrapuntal intricacy’ – was trained by theirs as surely as if Schoenberg had actually sat and taken notes, while Brahms and Liszt, gowns flapping, wrote on the board: ‘that’s how it’s done, from Mozart to me’, as Brahms once showed Zemlinsky.

These new ideas of rhythmic dislocation and harmonic expansion demand risks, and the Boulanger Trio (formed in 2006, based in Berlin) happily takes them. The peaks of Brahms’s first movement are scaled with utmost vehemence, the second theme surges on without let-up, the development is seized with nervous violence. Their reluctance to hold back lends an oppressive compulsion to Liszt’s late, despair-filled transformation of Vallée d’Obermann far removed from the sublime contemplation of the original, so that the breadth of Verklärte Nacht arrives as natural if unexpected relief. Memories of Tristan, ink-smeared or not, are banished by Steuermann’s transcription and the Boulanger players to create an uncanny, vitally charged chamber precursor of the Op 9 Chamber Symphony. It’s a gripping disc from start to finish. But the violinist must do something about her sniff, which is ubiquitous.

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