Gal - Piano Trio, Variations; Shostakovich - Piano Trio no.2
£13.25
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Label: Avie
Cat No: AV2390
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 17th August 2018
Contents
Works
Piano Trio in E major, op.18Variations on a Viennese Heurigen Melody, op.9
Piano Trio no.2 in E minor, op.67
Artists
Briggs Piano TrioWorks
Piano Trio in E major, op.18Variations on a Viennese Heurigen Melody, op.9
Piano Trio no.2 in E minor, op.67
Artists
Briggs Piano TrioAbout
“Briggs is an artist with prowess and personality ... [her] infectious pianism is impossible to resist” – MusicWeb International
“Woods holds his own against such wonders as Sawallisch, Celibidache, Giulini and immediately becomes a favourite for this delectable work.” – Classical Source (on Woods’ recording of Schumann’s Symphony no.3, AV2230)
“Refreshingly spontaneous” – BBC Music Magazine (on David Juritz’s Vivaldi Four Seasons)
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Gál: Piano Trio In E Major, Op. 18: I. Tranquillo Ma Con Moto
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2Gál: Piano Trio In E Major, Op. 18: II. Allegro Violento
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3Gál: Piano Trio In E Major, Op. 18 : III. Adagio Mesto
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4Gál: Variationen uber Eine Wiener Heurigenmelodie, Op. 9
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5Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 In E Minor, Op. 67: I. Andante
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6Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 In E Minor, Op. 67 : II. Allegro Con Brio
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7Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 In E Minor, Op. 67 : III. Largo
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8Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 In E Minor, Op. 67 : IV. Allegretto
Europadisc Review
Born in Vienna, Gál is a fascinating figure for anyone interested in the music and culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna and the impact of later horrors on that milieu. He studied in the city with Guido Adler and Brahms’s friend Eusebius Mandyczewski, and helped in the editing of ten volumes of the Brahms complete edition. The Düsseldorf première of his second opera, Die heilige Ente, in 1923 was a notable success, but his 1929 appointment as director of the Mainz Conservatory was curtailed in 1933 by the rise of Nazism. Although Gál then returned to Vienna, he was forced to leave again by the 1938 Anschluss. At the invitation of Tovey he went to Edinburgh and, although briefly interned as an ‘enemy alien’ in 1940, after the war he became a lecturer at the city’s university. Since that time, his music developed a small but loyal following among British cognoscenti, which is now belatedly beginning to bear real fruit in the recording studios.
Among the most striking things about Gál’s music is its cheerful, unaffectedly sunny disposition. It combines an essentially late-Romantic musical style in a lyrical post-Brahmsian vein with moments of early-20th-century harmonic pungency, as well as piquant gestures and textures redolent of Busoni and even Prokofiev. The E major Piano Trio of 1923 which opens proceedings on this new disc is a case in point. Its first movement, cast in a three-subject sonata form, begins with probing piano harmonies before the cello launches a long-breathed, lyrical first subject typical of Gál. The second subject is spikier and more driven, while the third, initially announced by the piano before being joined by violin and piano, has a relaxed wistfulness to it. From these unassuming but engaging elements Gál weaves a movement of considerable interest, with some beautifully crafted textures in the development and coda.
The second movement is a scherzo and trio marked Allegro violento, but these things are relative, and while there’s a certain diabolic flavour to some of the string scurrying, the relaxed trio reinforces the mood of overall calm. The finale, like the first movement, is a more substantial movement, opening with a long slow introduction marked Adagio mesto which eventually gives way to a sunnier and at times sprightly Allegro, capped by a lively and uplifting coda. The Briggs Piano Trio are excellent advocates of this music, preserving its essential charm, never over-forcing the livelier passages, and achieving an impeccably judged balance between parts.
They are just as fine in the delightfully witty Variations on a Viennese ‘Heurigen’ Melody of 1914, which is based on a tune Gál picked up from one of Vienna’s fabled wine taverns. It’s an enchanting mixture of old-world Gemütlichkeit and late-Romantic subtlety, without so much as a hint of the portent-laden musings of Gál’s Viennese musical contemporaries. You’d never guess that Europe stood on the brink of catastrophe as it was composed.
Beside this easygoing centrepiece, Shostakovich’s E minor Second Piano Trio of 1944 stands in stark contrast. Composed just three decades after Gál’s Variations, but under very different circumstances, this anguished memorial to the Soviet composer’s close friend Ivan Sollertinsky is worlds apart. And, to the Briggs Trio’s great credit, they do it full justice, revealing an urgent commitment and gritty virtuosity that would be out of place in Gál’s music. Better still, the Shostakovich, far from being an inappropriate coupling, seems to complement the Gál, giving vent to those darker emotional forces that the Viennese composer aws somehow able to suppress. From the pained intensity of the opening and the memorial stillness of the Largo to the sardonic humour of the scherzo and the emotional highs and lows of the ‘Dance of Death’ finale with its Jewish-flavoured melodies, Juritz, Woods and Briggs don’t miss a trick. This, as much as the two Gál pieces, is a performance of huge dedication and expressive honesty.
With an excellent recording made at Wyastone Leys, featuring a natural perspective (the piano set slightly back from the string players), this is an unusually interesting and involving disc that should be on the shelves of anyone with an interest in 20th-century chamber music. Admirers of Gál, Shostakovich, or indeed both, need not hesitate.
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