[ Harmonia Mundi / CD ]
Release Date: Saturday 1 November 2014
Should this item be out of stock at the time of your order, we would expect to be able to supply it to you within 2 - 4 weeks.
Gabriel Fauré's Piano Trio is a late work (1923) which at once aroused the admiration of his contemporaries and is now regarded as one of the finest trios in the French repertory. The much less well-known Trio of Gabriel Pierné, premiered a year earlier, is characterised by its solid architecture, its great melodic richness, and a notably inventive rhythmic style.
Two masterpieces that make an eminently logical coupling. It was premiered in Paris, at the Société Nationale de Musique, on 11 February 1922. Pierné himself played the piano part, with George Enescu on the violin and Gérard Hekking on the cello. After the concert, the composer Paul Ladmirault wrote a very flattering article in Le Courrier musical. One understands what Ladmirault meant when he wrote that it 'may take its place alongside the finest chamber music of César Franck and M. Fauré'.
"As is clear from this excellent performance by the Trio Wanderer, the reason Pierne's Trio is not better known is fashion rather than quality...this music remains quietly compelling, especially as played here. The Trio Wanderer beautifully sustain the understated conversational lyricism of the slow movement." BBC Music
"the Wanderer balance rhetoric and stillness to great effect...Pierné is unsparing of his players but the Wanderer rise to every challenge, and the piece ends in a gloriously affirmative manner." Gramophone
"Trio Wanderer prove ideal advocates, combining technical mastery of the highest degree with total authenticity. You feel they are completely at one with the idiom and love this work…This new recording demands to be heard. This ensemble has become one of the finest chamber groups in the world...you feel you are being guided by the best possible hands" International Record Review
"The first movement covers a huge range in its nearly 18 minutes…the players show a masterly command of its structure, maintaining line and direction through its great paragraphs, even when the music is at its most musing, and they build wonderfully to its ecstatic and sustained climax, with pulsing vibrato and some splendid violin swoops into the heights…an engaging performance of an engaging work." The Strad
Fauré:
Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 120
Pierné, G:
Piano Trio, Op. 45