Beethoven Piano Trios

Seraphim Trio

Beethoven Piano Trios
Format
Audio
Publisher
Country
Published
5 February 2016
ISBN
0028948119806

Beethoven Piano Trios

Seraphim Trio

The Seraphim Trio make a welcome return to ABC Classics with an album of Beethoven’s piano trios.

Beethoven’s trios are amongst the finest works in the chamber canon, taking the form spawned by Mozart and Haydn and developing it into a musical genre which reached symphonic proportions in its musical language and virtuosity.

The album combines two early trios with the later ‘Ghost’, showcasing the radical development of Beethoven’s style. The opening trio, Op.1 No.2, was written in 1795, when Beethoven was just 23 years old, and shows the influence of both Haydn (in its wit and surprise) and Mozart (in its lyricism - particularly evident in the sublime slow movement).Written just two years later, the Op.11 trio earns its nickname ‘Gassenhauer’, or ‘street hit’, on account of its final movement, a delightful set of variations on Joseph Weigl’s song Pria ch'io l'impegno: ‘Before I go to work I must have something to eat.‘

By 1808, when the ‘Ghost’ trio was written, Beethoven’s musical language had developed dramatically - and the piano trio, as the Seraphim’s pianist Anna Goldsworthy comments, ‘had now become the repository of some of his largest ideas’. ‘Over the previous decade,‘ Goldsworthy continues, ‘Beethoven had been conducting his experiments with piano sonority, realised most completely in the proto-impressionistic slow movement. This spectral, eerie sound world, never previously inhabited by humans, is the source of the trio’s nickname ‘Ghost’.‘

This album grew out of the Seraphim’s Beethoven Immersion project in 2015, when they performed the complete Beethoven trios in venues around Australia - including complete cycles in Tasmania and South Australia, and pop-up performances in libraries, museums, art galleries and train stations.

Review

With a flourish the new Seraphim Trio recording transports you back in time to when there was unmatched elegance and an outpouring of such beautiful music that you still hear it performed today. Formed two decades ago, the Seraphim Trio are some of the most dedicated musicians you’ll hear. Not only do they all have full time jobs (in different states!), they work tirelessly to bring classical music and particularly chamber music to the forefront of the Australian musical scene.

Their new recording comes from a year touring Beethoven to every corner of Australia. They performed the complete Beethoven Piano Trios in every place imaginable – concert halls, pop up stages, libraries, schools and even train stations. What is immediately apparent from the first strains of music that emerge is that they know every single note and what to do with it. Not only that, but they adore every single note. The care and precision is just delightful, particularly in the first piano trio where you can feel the spirits of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven blending to create something truly magnificent. Don’t miss this album of Beethoven; it will capture your heart.


Kate Rockstrom

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