Dvorak - The Complete Piano Trios
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Label: Supraphon
Cat No: SU43192
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 2
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 22nd September 2023
Contents
Artists
Boris Giltburg (piano)Veronika Jaruskova (violin)
Peter Jarusek (cello)
Works
Piano Trios nos.1-4 (complete)Artists
Boris Giltburg (piano)Veronika Jaruskova (violin)
Peter Jarusek (cello)
About
Piano Trio no.4, “Dumky”, ranking among Antonín Dvořák’s most celebrated works, is one of the most frequently recorded chamber pieces there is. After attending a performance, with the composer on the piano, Leoš Janáček summed up his impressions succinctly: “A new source of light has flashed.” When it comes to Piano Trio no.3, the renowned Vienna-based critic Eduard Hanslick called it a gem, demonstrating that Dvořák was “one of the best modern masters”. Piano Trios nos. 1 and 2, however, have been scarcely performed. In this light, the complete recording of Dvořák’s piano trios is a project richly deserving attention. All the more so due to the artists who have made it: Boris Giltburg, winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition and one of the world’s most distinguished contemporary pianists, alongside Veronika Jarůšková and Peter Jarůšek, members of the globally celebrated Pavel Haas Quartet, who have earned great recognition for performing Dvořák’s music – Gramophone Recording of the Year (quartets) and Gramophone Chamber Award (quintets, together with Giltburg). The three musicians featured on the album manifest an incredible chime. Possessing the uttermost technical brilliance, they breathe as one. The album was made at the studios in the picturesque Wye Valley, straddling the border between England and Wales, under the supervision of the legendary producer Andrew Keener while London was celebrating the coronation of Charles III. Exceptional moments for Dvořák’s exceptional music …
Sound/Video
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1Piano Trio No.1 in B flat, op.21, B51 (1875, rev. 1880): 1. Allegro molto
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2Piano Trio No.1 in B flat, op.21, B51 (1875, rev. 1880): 2. Adagio molto e mesto
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3Piano Trio No.1 in B flat, op.21, B51 (1875, rev. 1880): 3. Allegretto scherzando
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4Piano Trio No.1 in B flat, op.21, B51 (1875, rev. 1880): 4. Finale. Allegro vivace
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5Piano Trio No.2 in G minor, op.26, B56 (1876): 1. Allegro moderato
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6Piano Trio No.2 in G minor, op.26, B56 (1876): 2. Largo
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7Piano Trio No.2 in G minor, op.26, B56 (1876): 3. Scherzo. Presto
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8Piano Trio No.2 in G minor, op.26, B56 (1876): 4. Finale. Allegro non tanto
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9Piano Trio No.3 in F minor, op.65, B130 (1883): 1. Allegro ma non troppo
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10Piano Trio No.3 in F minor, op.65, B130 (1883): 2. Allegretto grazioso
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11Piano Trio No.3 in F minor, op.65, B130 (1883): 3. Poco adagio
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12Piano Trio No.3 in F minor, op.65, B130 (1883): 4. Finale. Allegro con brio
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13Dumky for piano trio, op.90, B166 (1891): 1. Lento maestoso
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14Dumky for piano trio, op.90, B166 (1891): 2. Poco adagio
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15Dumky for piano trio, op.90, B166 (1891): 3. Andante
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16Dumky for piano trio, op.90, B166 (1891): 4. Andante moderato
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17Dumky for piano trio, op.90, B166 (1891): 5. Allegro
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18Dumky for piano trio, op.90, B166 (1891): 6. Lento maestoso
Europadisc Review
The acclaimed Pavel Haas Quartet has established a fruitful artistic partnership with the pianist Boris Giltburg in the music of Brahms and Dvořák (including an award-winning account of the latter’s great Piano Quintet). Now Giltburg returns to form a trio with half of the PHQ: wife-and-husband team, violinist Veronika Jarůšková and cellist Peter Jarůšek. Their new double-album of Dvořák’s complete piano trios for Supraphon certainly lives up to expectations, directly challenging the Suk Trio’s marvellously idiomatic accounts of these works for the same label from the late 1970s.
Dvořák destroyed his first two essays in the piano trio genre, and the works published as his first two trios, op.21 in B flat major (1875) and op.26 in G minor (1876), date from a time when he had already found his own distinctive voice as a composer, marrying elements of palpably Czech folk style with a deeply ingrained Schubertian lyricism. What one immediately notices in these performances is the sweetness of the string tone (particularly Jarůšková’s violin), and the unanimity of attack and phrasing. In music which often pits the two bowed instruments against the keyboard, the piano is set slightly back in the sound-picture (recorded in the Wyastone Concert Hall by producer Andrew Keener and engineer Oscar Torres), never swamping the strings. Even in the most densely-scored passages, there’s a warmth, clarity and focus that make these performances a constant pleasure to listen to.
In the First Piano Trio, there’s a rhythmic buoyancy and poise that brings out all the music’s charm. Countermelodies sing, and one marvels at the variety of textures that Dvořák is able to conjure from his economic basic material. The final exuberant bars are endowed with a particularly joyous feel. That economy of means is even more apparent in the Second Piano Trio, associated by many commentators with the death of Dvořák’s infant daughter Josefa in September 1875, but coloured by a gentle nostalgia rather than anything more tragic. This performance brings out the full range of expression that the composer generates from his simple basic material, including the agitated fortissimo string demisemiquavers in the latter stages of the first movement’s exposition, and the turbulent passages in the development. There’s a touching delicacy to the intimations of a funeral march in the Largo second movement, while the Presto Scherzo has both energy and bite.
By 1883 when Dvořák composed the F minor Piano Trio, op.65, he was fully established as a composer of some standing in central Europe, and the weight of expectation can be detected in a work that contains more than a nod to his mentor Brahms. Here (and in the Fourth Piano Trio) Giltburg and the Jarůšeks take a generally more expansive approach than the Suk Trio in the 1970s: never at the expense of momentum, but using the extra space to bring out myriad details among the rich textures. As in Brahms’s symphonies, the key to op.65 is in its middle movements: the unsettling opening of the intermezzo-like Allegretto grazioso second movement gradually gives way to a more relaxed mien. Similarly, there's a sombre tone to the piano’s chords accompanying the cello's vocal-like melody that launches the Poco adagio slow movement, but then delicate rays of light shine forth as the violin introduces a second theme. There’s a purposefulness to the tempo set here for the closing Allegro con brio that’s suggested by a close reading of its opening gesture, but the excitement increases before the radiant, typically Dvořákian Meno mosso that precedes the headlong closing eight-bar Vivace.
The duality encapsulated in op.65’s closing bars is writ large in Dvořák’s final and most celebrated work for piano trio, the Dumky, op.90, of 1891. The originality of creating a large-scale piano trio from a series of six chamber miniatures that alternate meditative slow passages with more passionate animated outbursts made a huge impression on Janáček when he reviewed a performance in Brno. Dvořák himself was pleased with the results in these works, written at the height of his fame, that are ‘both happy and sad’, and which combine artful sophistication with popular appeal.
Here, above all, these performers are in their element, and they deliver performances that are richly satisfying, exploring the full spectrum of tone colours, and combining penetrating introspection with infectious high spirits. The fast passages of the second Dumka are enough to lift anyone from despondency, while the strings’ ethereal response to the piano’s opening phrase in no.3 is a thing of wonder, as is the rounded tone of the piano’s single-line continuation. The fourth Dumka has a deliciously deliberate tread; the exultant opening of the fifth rings out, its glorious cello line punctuated by pizzicato violin chords; and the sixth and final Dumka is underpinned by wonderfully resonant cello fifths, giving way to spectacularly full-throttle tuttis. Make no mistake, this is Dvořák playing of the highest order and – even against some strong competition – these performances as a whole set a new benchmark in this marvellous quartet of works. Urgently recommended!
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