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BIOGRAPHY
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Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky: Piano Trios
allmusic.com
Review by Mike D. Brownell
Written in response to the tragic and deeply-felt death of his friend and mentor Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky's A minor Piano Trio represents his only foray into a genre that he had previous found undesirable. Writing in tribute to Rubinstein yielded a massive, elegiac first movement and a lighter but hardly frivolous set of eleven variations, each of which represents a memory of Rubinstein's life. The elegiac style for piano trios caught on quickly among Russian composers; the young Rachmaninov produced two such works, the first of which -- a soulful, one-movement work -- is heard on this album. Performing on this Champs Hill Records album is the Gould Piano Concerto. The ensemble not only plays with meticulous technical skill, pristine intonation, and close attention to details in the score, but they also manage to put forth convincing, engaging performances of compositions that can all too often become overwrought and even sappy. Instead of using excessive amounts of rubato, the Gould Trio uses a broad dynamic range to shape phrases and accentuate highlights. Balance within the trio is generally quite good; neither of the strings is ever unnecessarily obscured by the more densely scored piano. The only possible thing lacking in this recording is a richer, meatier bass sound in both the cello and piano left hand.
An uplifting elegy
Erik Levi enjoys virtuosic Tchaikovsky from the Gould Piano Trio
BBC Music Magazine
With its epic sweep and passages of intoxicating virtuosity, Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio seems the ideal work for high profile soloists wishing to perform chamber music. The catalogue boasts many recordings featuring an all-star cast, the most recent of which from Lang Lang, Vadim Repin and Mischa Maisky on DG received a strong endorsement in these pages (Christmas issue, 2009). Yet even greater dividends can accrue from performances given by long-established chamber ensembles that have grappled with the work's many interpretative challenges, not least unifying its sprawling design.
Such qualities are very much to the fore in this beautifully recorded performance from the Gould Piano Trio. Its players follow the composer's directions to the letter, bringing a natural flow to the various difficult changes in tempo in the first movement and mapping its emotional narrative most convincingly. Likewise they bring freshness, panache, charm and infinite variety to the second movement variations. Highlights include a brilliantly characterised fugue and the ensuing impressionistic Andante flebile introversion from the opening of the piece. In the finale, Benjamin Frith impressively negotiates Tchaikovsky's full-blooded piano writing without coarsening the tone. If the performance here seems less exultant than in the DG recording, the Goulds are more compelling in plumbing the depths of despair in the coda. Both ensembles offer the early Rachmaninov Trio as a coupling, and although there's little to choose between the two versions the Goulds adopt more subtle timbral effects in the mysterious string passage work that accompanies some of the impassioned melodies.
Performance *****
Recording *****
Rachmaninoff: Trio élégiaque No1, CD review
Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio. Gould Piano Trio
Rating: * * * * *
The Daily Telegraph By Geoffrey Norris
It is all too easy for these two piano trios to get bogged down in sentiment and density of texture, but the Gould finds a way of keeping the fabric transparent and airy while maintaining the elegiac tone that governs both of them. Rachmaninoff clearly had Tchaikovsky’s trio of 1881-2 as a model when he wrote his first, single-movement Trio élégiaque a decade later, and they make a persuasive coupling in performances of taste and sincere passion.
MusicWeb
At the outset I should say that Champs Hill Records assure me that despite the fact that these performances were recorded back in 2005, this album is a first release and not a reissue as some readers might suspect!
Having got that out of the way, I would hasten to add that these performances are polished, nicely blended and heartfelt. It would be difficult to imagine more robust, sensitive and responsive playing of these Late-Romantic works.
Tchaikovsky’s epic Trio with its widely varied moods and brilliant colours proved to be very influential upon this musical genre. He was asked to write a piano trio by his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck (whose resident piano trio included, as pianist, a French teenager, called Claude Debussy). At first reluctant, Tchaikovsky then changed his mind on the news of the death of his friend and critic, Nikolai Rubinstein in March 1881. The work was composed in Rome. Its imposing 19-minute, opening movement brims with melodies and is passionate and lyrical. The Gould Trio give it attack aplenty in its vigorous moments and touching tenderness in the quieter passages. The second movement is a set of inspired variations that includes: a waltz, a mazurka, and a brilliant little evocation of a music-box. It is thought that one variation was written in memory of a trip to an Amusement Park and another to a ball. The concluding movement, some 12 minutes long, is another exciting and vivacious variation and finale. Yet it ends in grief with a Chopinesque funeral march; presumably, Tchaikovsky had the passing of Rubinstein in mind.
Rachmaninov’s brief but haunting single-movement Trio élégiaque No. 1 is pure rapture in the hands of the Gould Piano Trio. Rachmaninov wrote two Trio élégiaques; they were written in quick succession in 1892 and 1893. The three-movement second Trio élégiaque is much better known. It was written under the influence of the news of Tchaikovsky’s death. - Tchaikovsky had encouraged Rachmaninov when he was a student. But this Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor was written in white-heat fervour in January 1892. It was premiered in a recital that the 18-year-old Rachmaninov gave at the Moscow Conservatory where he was still a student and, at the time, just 18 years old. It is a remarkably assured composition for one so young, which makes it so much more incredible and sad that this performance was its first and last in Rachmaninov’s lifetime. It was not published until 1947. Maybe this was not so surprising considering that it was written at such a great speed for that first performance. The score contained many errors and an almost complete lack of dynamic markings. Heavy editing was therefore necessary. Why is the term élégiaque applied to this trio? There appears to be no personality suggested. Malcolm MacDonald suggests that Rachmaninov had been suffering from depression after ill-health in the previous year. Indeed, a sense of isolation and desolation is apparent from its opening and closing pages. Not surprisingly, the piano part is given pride of place in this trio, such that it is almost a miniature piano concerto. Yet there is grateful lyrical writing for both string instruments.
I must applaud Malcolm MacDonald’s erudite and illuminating booklet notes; a model of their kind.
Polished performances of two outstanding works in the Piano Trio genre.
BBC Music Magazine
Will the real Charles Villiers Stanford please stand up? Sure enough, here they both do. The Stanford who personified the Royal College of Music's reverence for Brahms is represented by his earlyish First Piano Trio and late Second Piano Quartet. Meanwhile, Stanford the Irish maverick steps forward in style with his violin-and-piano Legend and Irish Fantasies. If only there had been room here for more of these Irish pieces: they're a delight, with a wry inventiveness (imagine Grieg after several pints of Guinness) whose character is savoured by Lucy Gould's classy violin-playing.
It's hard to draw a deeper connection between the apparently un-Teutonic composer who came up with this winsome Irish material, and the one who could absorb himself so fully, and to such a finished technical standard, in the Brahmsian Piano Trio. That said, there's an individual voice at work in the Trio too, plus superbly clear technique, and an attractive strand of Dvóřak in soulful Dumka mode to suffuse the Allegretto con moto slow movement.
The style of the later, unpublished Piano Quartet, edited from Stanford's manuscript by Jeremy Dibble, is very familiar, if a notch fuller and darker. Throw in the state-of-the-art performances, and this is a pleasing disc indeed. Malcolm Hayes.
Performance ****
Recording ****
Gramophone Magazine
Two superior Stanford works - and another feather in this ensemble's cap
The First of Stanford's three piano trios dates from 1889 and bears a dedication to his good friend, the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. It's a wonderfully fluent, superbly crafted creation that by no means follows convention, its confidently paced outer movements enclosing a deliciously capricious Allegretto con moto and an extended Tempo di menuetto ma molto moderato with two contrasting Trio sections (there is no actual slow movement as such).
The Second Piano Quartet was completed in Janaury 1913 and would appear to have been heard just once prior to its revival (by these very same artists) at the 2009 Corbridge Chamber Music Festival in Northumberland. Jeremy Dibble's new edition from the autograph manuscript reveals another noble, resourcefully worked canvas, full of memorable invention, most notably that swaggering F major cello tune in the Trio section of the Scherzo.
Striking, too, is the Irish flavour of the Adagio second movement, which alternates between 5/8 and 3/8 time and incorporates a more restless, march-like central episode. Sandwiched between the two main offerings come three smaller items for violin and piano. The fetching Legend dates from 1893, as do the Six Irish Fantasies, of which Nos 3 and 5 ("Jig" and "Hush Song") are surveyed here; indeed, the latter turns out to be a most gorgeous lullaby that I've already replayed many times.
I'm delighted to be able to report that the Gould Piano Trio are magnificently stylish and sympathetic champions, and in the Piano Quartet they are joined by the excellent David Adams on the viola. Benefitting from top-notch production values throughout, this generously filled disc should be snapped up without delay. Andrew Achenbach.
The Telegraph
Stanford was steeped in the 19th-century Teutonic tradition, and his First Piano Trio of 1889 reveals more than a passing acquaintance with the music of Brahms. It is certainly no wilting English violet of a piece, this excellent performance from the Gould Piano Trio highlighting its sinew, and its dramatic contours. In the Piano Quartet No 2 of 1913 there is a toughness and resolution to the workings that the Gould elucidate with understanding and panache.
BBC Radio 3 CD Review
...the Trio has a brusque intensity which is well sustained here, the end of the work is satisfyingly emphatic. A seriously good rediscovery in this world premiere recording. Unmissable at Naxos's budget price!
Naxos have already done well by Stanford with recordings of his symphonies...choral music and the Piano Trio No.3, etc., played by the Gould Piano Trio. Much as I enjoyed that earlier recording, I think the current successor is even better. If you still harboured any misconceptions about Stanford as a comfortable Victorian composer, forget them: the First Piano Trio combines as much intensity and lyricism as any of Elgar’s chamber music and the Gould Trio do it full justice. Aided by David Adams, they also give a first-class performance of the Second Piano Quartet, an unjustly neglected work which was never published in the composer’s lifetime and has only recently been resurrected by the Gould Trio with the editorial assistance of Professor Jeremy Dibble, who also contributes the authoritative notes. The mp3 sound is very good, contributing to a strong recommendation.
Guardian
Chandos continues to fly the flag for neglected 20th-century British music with this excellently played selection of Cyril Scott's chamber music. All the major works here, except the first piano trio, were composed after the second world war, and all but the clarinet quintet are recorded here for the first time. Taken individually, the pieces are impressive – fluent, and well structured, with the Debussyan influences of especially the first piano trio well integrated into what is fundamentally a late romantic idiom.
BBC Music Magazine
Performance *****
Sound ****
Between them Chandos and Dutton have totally transformed the Cyril Scott discography in the past few years, so that we begin to know this elusive and prolific composer much better; but there are still treasures to find. Chandos continues the process with a valuable disc of chamber music. Only one piece-the expansive, passionate and highly-coloured Piano Trio no.1- dates from Scott’s period of greatest celebrity as the ‘English Debussy’. The excellent Gould Trio are the stalwarts of this enjoyable disc.
SMETANA,
SUK & TCHAIKOVSKY
-
Royal
Northern
College
of
Music
No
single
listener
could
possibly
attend
every
concert
in
this marathon
so it
seems
unfair
to
mention
only
a few.
But
I shall
remember
the thrilling
performances
by the
GPT
of Smetana’s
elegiac and
powerful G
minor trio,
a work I did
not know and
which seems
to me to be
a masterpiece,
and of Tchaikovsky’s
A minor tribute
to Nicholas
Rubinstein,
a memorial
of great
length that
holds the
attention
from start
to finish.
Sunday
Telegraph,
21 January
2007
SHOSTAKOVICH
AND ARENSKY
- City of
London Festival
Such
is the
concentration
of festival
venues
in the Square
Mile that
one can
stroll to
the next
concert
without
breaking
into a sweat,
as was my
intention
on Tuesday.
So devastating
was the
Gould Piano
Trio's performance
of Shostakovich's
Trio No
2 at St
Lawrence
Jewry,
however,
that I
changed
my plans.
Written
in 1944, the
Trio was inspired
by Nazi atrocities
at Treblinka.
Shostakovich,
who had been
evacuated
from Leningrad,
was haunted
by reports
of Jews being
forced to
dance at gun-point
on mass graves.
Hence the
brutal passacaglia
for piano
(Benjamin
Frith), hence
the shell-shocked
wail of harmonics,
hence the
traumatised
dreydlekh,
hence the
world-upside-down
insanity of
a sher for
cello (Alice
Neary) and
violin (Lucy
Gould), stripped
of all joy
and hope and
humour. Master
musicians
in Arensky's
opulent Trio
in D minor
- their octaves
impeccably
tuned, their
articulation
graceful,
their phrasing
intelligent,
their sound
delicious
- the Gould
Piano Trio
here proved
themselves
to be master
dramatists.
Gould and
Neary's blanched,
then bloody
tones, and
Frith's near-orchestral
control of
dynamics made
this an uncommonly
powerful and
disturbing
experience.
The
Independent,
16 July 2006
Wigmore
Hall, March
2006
...Shostakovich's
trio was revelatory.
Starting and
ending quietly,
those of us
who have known
it for the
six decades
of its concert
life will
never forget
the eeriness
of the beginning,
with stratospheric
cello harmonics
above the
violin which
joins with
the piano
to make a
trio sound
of arresting
originality...The
Goulds traversed
the full range
of emotion
in this trio.
WWW.MUSICALPOINTERS.CO.UK
WORKS
BY MACMILLAN
- CCA,
Glasgow
...the
outstanding
piano playing
of Benjamin
Frith unearthed
a darker,
more sardonic
side to
the music
than is
commonly
revealed.
Frith,
a fascinating
pianist,
gets right
under the
sking of
the music,
exposing
a core
that
makes for
uncomfortable
listening.
The
Glasgow
Herald,
23 January
2006
CD
REVIEW:
FUCHS PIANO
TRIOS, QUARTZ
RECORDS
Lucy
Gould,
Alice Neary
and Benjamin
Frith are
delightful
partners,
clearly
having
a ball; their
enthusiasm
is infectious.
Gramophone,
February
2006 EDITOR'S
CHOICE
...the
string
playing
has richness
and fine
intonation
and the
balance
with piano
is good.
An enjoyable
discovery.
4/5 for
sound;
5/5 for performance
HiFi
News, February
2006
Reviews for the Gould Piano Trio's recent CD
Brahms, Piano Trios - Volume One
Quartz - QTZ2011
Reviewed in The Sunday Times, 30 January 2005
The hyper-self-critical Brahms destroyed more chamber music than he published. Luckily, the B major piano trio, written when he was only 21, escaped. Many years later, he revised and tightened it in a composite version that preserved and enhanced the magnificent sweep and energy of the original. By contrast, the late C major trio, masterly though it is, wants something of the B major’s freshness of inspiration; but the performance by the Gould Trio is so good – strong, passionate and at the same time delicate – that you are hardly conscious of any lack. They are equally fine in the glorious B major.
Reviewed in The Observer, 17 April 2005
The first of a three-volume, set of complete Brahms trios, with the rest (including horn and clarinet trios) to follow at six-monthly intervals, this elegant, spirited coupling of the first and second piano trios bodes well for the rest of the cycle. Cellist Alice Neary and pianist Benjamin Frith have developed a deep musical understanding with violinist Lucy Gould as her trio tour the UK, Europe and the US in this repertoire, combining a youthful freshness with virtuoso panache as their talents merge into a richly cohesive whole.
Reviewed in The Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2005
The Gould Piano Trio have won plaudits for recordings of Mendelssohn and Beethoven. Here, they are just as persuasive in two contrasting trios by Brahms: the youthful, lyrically expansive B major - drastically revised by the composer in his fifties - and the glorious C major, no less luxuriant in its themes, but far tauter in their development.
Compared with some other groups, the Gould may initially seem to favour Classical restraint over heroic, full-blooded Romanticism. But it soon emerges that their refinement and emphasis on light, lucid textures by no means preclude an authentic Brahmsian intensity.
The Gould are especially good at seeing a movement whole; and if an apparent climax seems underplayed, it will always be because they are eyeing the real climax later in the piece. They have a subtle feeling, too, for the expressive crux of Brahms's long, arching phrases. Both the darting, crepuscular scherzos gain from the Gould's unusual delicacy of touch, while their rarefied playing of the B major's adagio is as moving as any of their emotionally charged rivals.
From the Gramophone, April 2005
Lucy Gould and her colleagues play Op 8’s first movement suavely, with lovely tone and refined expression…In the Scherzo…the Gould Trio, with their lightness of touch , make a special, slightly sinister effect in the quiet passages and, by this delicacy, enhance the explosive impact of the sudden fortes…Benjamin Frith’s ringing tone and virtuoso panache making the most of the brilliant piano writing…the Gould’s superb control and rhythmic precision brings the symphonic argument of the first movement and the Scherzo’s nocturnal rustlings into sharp relief.
MORE REVIEWS
Royal
Northern College of Music
The
Gould Piano Trio revealed the beauty and orthodox mastery
of Clara’s Piano Trio in G minor, after which Robert’s
Fantasiestücke, Op 88, sounded all the more eccentric,
rhythmically obsessive, fascinating, moving. Brahms’s
early piano trio in B came over as the mighty utterance
of a young composer whom both Schumanns regarded as a fully
formed, indeed god-like, genius.
Sunday Times, January 2005
LA
County Museum, Los Angeles
HONEST
EMOTION MEETS ARTISTIC INSIGHT
With
a deeply felt performance of Smetana’s Piano Trio in
G minor, the Gould Piano Trio closed a wonderful three-part
program Wednesday in the Bing Theatre at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art.
Smetana
composed the work upon the death of his 4-year-old daughter,
Bedriska, from scarlet fever. It will not tolerate a moment
of insincerity or exaggeration from the players. Violinist
Lucy Gould, cellist Alice Neary and pianist Benjamin Frith
met its emotional demands with the highest commitment and
deepest artistic insight, seamlessly moving through its
shifting, conflicting states of feeling while revealing
their complexities and nuances.
To
single out just one example: There’s a moment in the
first movement when a noble cello theme mounts into an impassioned,
then almost hysterical ensemble climax. Shortly after, the
movement breaks down and stops, only to start over again
from the beginning, with a repeat of the violin’s keening
motive. The cycle of grief is endless. All this was detailed
with the most natural sense of inevitability by the Gould
musicians.
Similarly,
they revealed the exposed, vulnerable heart of Brahms in
the vernal simplicity of the third movement of his Piano
Trio Nº 3 in C minor.
Everywhere,
they played with unanimity of impulse and aesthetic. In
Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E flat Opus 1, Nº 1,
which opened the program, they added impishness and urbane
playfulness.
Their
range and variety made for a joyful evening.
Los
Angeles Times, March 7 2003
New
Zealand Tour/ June-July 2002
Benjamin
Frith’s rippling piano and the finely toned strings
of Lucy Gould and Alice Neary reveal why the Goulds are
a top-line ensemble. Gould’s violin can soar like a
lark, with a sweetness of tone that is honey to the ear;
Neary’s spruce, articulated cello lines bring the bounce
and propulsion of a jazz group…. scrumptiously performed.
New Zealand Herald, 1 July 2002
Just
gorgeous: Benjamin Frith’s marvellously fluent piano,
with the innocence of a music box at times, an ingénue
tone from violin, while the sound of Alice Neary’s
cello seemed to float up from the floor, disembodied, without
beginning or end.
Wellington Evening Post, 25 June 2002
English
Music Festival, Stratford-upon-Avon
Their
ensemble is clear, bright and fresh, the ensemble playing
quite faultless.
Birmingham Post/18 October 2002
The
concert was a delight from start to finish. The Beethoven
Trio in E flat (Op 1 No 1) was excellent: crystal clear,
beautifully articulated. The Andante really was as cantabile
as marked; the scherzo fizzed along; and throughout, the
rapport between all three players was complete. They seemed
not merely to be thinking, but also playing as one. Benjamin
Frith's piano was limpid, and violin and cello were, tonally,
matched to perfection.
Music & Vision, March 2003
Purcell
Room Lunchtime Recital
The
Gould Trio is of international calibre and its three players,
each very individual, are adept at the give and take which
is the essence of chamber music conversation, each knowing
when to recede temporarily into an accompanying role.
www.musicweb.uk.net, May 2002
Weymouth
College Theatre
The
group fully lived up to expectations… they gave a performance
which was by turns joyful, heart-rending and full of drama,
but never dull.
Dorset Echo, 22 January 2002
CD:
Mendelssohn Piano Trios Nos. 1 and 2, Naxos
The
Gould Trio gives fine, incisive, carefully moulded, beautifully
coloured and paced performances.
The Sunday Times, 13 January 2002
The
young players of the Gould Trio give performances as fine
as any on disc … [and] prove to be inspired recording
artists, offering passagework of sparkling evenness and
clarity.
The Guardian, 14 December 2001
USA
Tour/ March-April 2001
Gould
Piano Trio makes a spirited debut in L.A. This is a strong
group… spirited and direct. Their sound was big and
bright, their balances assured…
Los Angeles Times, 26 March 2001
Pure
Gould: with clear textures and balanced ensemble, a recital
in New York this April offered trio playing at its best.
The Strad, July 2001
Kendal
Concert Club
…
this was assuredly one of the best-ever concerts. What techniques!
What musicianship!
Westmorland Gazette, February 2001
European
Seminar of Young Musical Talent/ Pilsen
"The
outstanding instrumentalists with their unusual feel for
chamber expression played with perfect intonation and great
depth of tone… Each work, it seemed, had been interpreted
with a discernible strong inner response to the composition."
Region Pizensko, September 1995
Wigmore
Hall Debut Recital
"Brimming
with verve and panache, this talented trio displayed commitment
and maturity in their polished performances."
The
Strad, February 1994
