Piano Trios From France by Altenberg Trio Wien

Altenberg Trio Wien

Piano Trios From France

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917202229
Catnr: CC 72022
Release date: 31 October 2002

1 CD

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917202229

Catalogue number
CC 72022

Release date
31 October 2002

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Maurice Ravel - Trio in A minor for Piano, Violin and Violoncello

The list of twentieth century piano trios may be short, but it contains several gems. One of the most precious is the brilliant specimen written by Maurice Ravel in 1914, shortly before he temporarily abandoned life as a musician to serve as a driver for the French army. The Piano Trio in A minor is a true sonata for three players, rich in the harmonic and textural innovations Ravel had accomplished in the prewar years, but ultimately, and very possibly more significantly (Ravel certainly felt so), composed around balanced, quintessentially Classical patterns.
The trio has four movements: Modéré, Pantoum (assez vif), Passacaille, and Final (animé). The first movement is a strikingly new variety of sonata-allegro form. The first theme, announced by the piano in pianissimo parallel chords at the very opening of the piece and then taken up by the strings in octaves, is like a shadowy recollection of something out of Basque folk music. Its unusual ostinato rhythm seems to echo in the mind's ear even after Ravel has moved on to the Plus lent qu'au début second theme -- a second theme that is very unusually set in the same key as the first. (Ravel makes sense of this atypically tonic-saturated exposition by ending the movement not in the tonic but rather in the relative major, C.) A brief development makes way to a truncated recapitulation which in retrospect seems but a preface to an extended coda in which the ostinato's first idea lingers in the lowest bass of the piano until at last it becomes a faint, colorless drone that dies away into nothingness. This is a remarkable movement that deserves its reputation as a masterpiece.
The second movement is a playful scherzo that will likely sound the most typically French to most listeners. The Passacaille is of course a passacaglia, taking a slow, winding eight-measure pattern as the material to be repeated; the repetition is not strict, and soon a second thematic notion worms its way into the movement, helping to build a massive climax.
Ravel's love of shifting meters is put on display in the quick-paced Final, with contrasts between 5/4 / 7/4. Again sonata-allegro form shapes the course of the music, seeping through the cracks of what might at first seem to be a more freely composed exhibition of instrumental passion -- and the closing bars, filled with shimmering, never-ending trills from the strings and a wild whoosh or two from the piano, are certainly passionate.

Gabriel Fauré - Trio for Piano, Violin and Violoncello In D Minor, Op. 120

After an award of the Légion d'honneur and some gentle prodding, Fauré -- now completely deaf -- gave up his directorship of the Paris Conservatoire on October 1, 1920. On the second day of 1922, with the triumph of his Piano Quintet No. 2 the previous spring fading into memory, he wrote to his friend Fernand Bourgeat, "I feel dreadfully the onset of old age and I regret not finding my freedom sooner...I've done good work even so. I've finished a 13th nocturne." In March, from Nice, he wrote to his wife, "I'm doing absolutely nothing and haven't thought of two notes worth writing down since I've been here. Have I come to the end of my resources?" Jacques Durand, his publisher, had suggested in January that he compose a trio for piano, violin, and cello, but Fauré would not take up the challenge until April in Paris. Staying at Argèles through July to revisit childhood haunts, he asked that sketches for the Trio be sent after him -- only to contract bronchial pneumonia near the end of the month. By mid-August he was back in Annecy-le-Vieux, in Savoy, where the Piano Quintet No. 2 had taken shape over the summers of 1919 and 1920. "I've started a trio for clarinet (or violin), cello, and piano," he wrote to his wife on September 26, 1922. "The trouble is that I can't work for long at a time. My worst tribulation is perpetual fatigue." Returning to Paris for the winter, he completed the Trio in mid-February 1923. Durand published it the same year as a Trio for piano, violin, and violoncello, probably with the composer's assent -- the violin part contains passages of double-stopping -- while the idea of using a clarinet seems to have quietly fallen by the wayside.
Despite its small scale and general restraint, much happens in the succinct opening Allegro ma non troppo. Two long-breathed melodies -- the first wavering between elegy and lament, the second trailing a childhood memory of distant bells -- receive a replete exposition and contrapuntal development, with a new exposition (rather than a recapitulation) and development rounded with a coda of defiant despair. The Andantino, the most extensive of the Trio's three movements and the one with which Fauré had begun the composition, opens with a fiat of the most lambent lyricism shared by violin and cello, answered by a piquantly harmonized, heart-stopping melody on the piano from whose interplay he spins a delicate, exquisitely modulated, but puissant pathos. Much has been made of the resemblance of the Finale's opening rappel à l'ordre and the cry "Ridi, Pagliaccio" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (e.g., "La commedia è finita"). Tempting as that may be, an allusion was unintended. More remarkable is that the phrase, several times repeated, introduces an elegantly rumbustious, thumpingly accented, plein air rustic dance -- a last surprise from the old magician. The premiere was given at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique on May 12, 1923, by Robert Krettly, violin; Jacques Patté, cello; and Tatiana Sanzévitch, piano.

Frank Martin - Trio Sur Des Mélodies Populaires Irlandaises for Piano, Violin an Violoncello, W 20

In the years 1920-1930 Martin experimented with ancient, Indian, and Bulgarian rhythms as well as with folk music. His Piano Trio on Irish Folktunes is a product of this experimentation. There is a story on the composition of this work. One day in Paris Martin met an American with Irish roots who was a music-lover. He requested Martin to write a piano trio for him and to use for it some Irish popular melodies. The composer agreed and studied collections of Irish authentic folksongs at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, choosing for his trio, some little-known melodies, elaborating them artfully in his work. The American, however, did not appreciate the original way and style of Frank Martin's composition and withdrew his commission!
The first movement is based completely on a rhythmical progression, which is achieved with a stepwise accelerando, so that tempo becomes quicker with the entrance of every new musical thought. In this movement the return of themes plays no role - it is the rhythmical interrelationship between the various presented melodies which form the unity of the movement.
In het second movement one will recognise a bigger thematic unity thanks to the return of a melody, this melody appears always in the same form, register and tonality, while the melodic and rhythmical background keeps changing.
The engine of the third movement, Gigue, is not an accelerando anymore, but the enrichment of the rhythmical texture by superimposing different motives. Here one can follow the metric independence of the individual voices of the trio even better as in the preceding movements.
Tu summarize: this trio doesn't require a lot from the harmony and polyphonic principle of imitation, but demands everything when it comes to rhythm and melody, which is the core of Irish singing and dancing.

Drie verschillende pianotrio’s van Franse componisten uit de 20e eeuw
In deze opname speelt het Altenberg Trio Wien, pianotrio’s van de Franse componisten Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Fauré en Frank Martin. De stijlen van de 3 componisten variëren van harmonisch en innovatief, ingetogen en fijnzinnig tot ritmisch en modern. Beleef hoe het ensemble deze muziek op een prachtige en gewaagde manier tot leven brengt.

Pianotrio's zijn muziekstukken, speciaal gecomponeerd voor een kamermuziekensemble, dat bestaat uit een piano en 2 andere instrumenten, meestal viool en cello. Het Altenberg Trio Wien is zo'n ensemble, opgericht in Wenen in1994 en in Europa een van de bekendste piano trio's van deze tijd.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), van Zwitsers-Baskische afkomst, maakte naam als componist van piano- en orkestmuziek. Hij schreef ook een grootschalig ballet voor het beroemde balletgezelschap Ballets Russes. Ravel was impressionist in de klassieke muziek, en voorloper en initiator van het expressionisme. Hij schreef zijn briljante en waardevolle pianotrio uit 1914, kort voor hij als chaufffeur ging dienen in het Franse leger. Een sonate vol harmonische en muzikale innovaties, gecomponeerd rond evenwichtige klassieke patronen.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) is in zijn tijd een bekend componist van piano- en kamermuziek. Zelfs een opera behoort tot zijn oeuvre. Ook vernieuwde hij de Franse religieuze muziek. Fauré had een eigen stijl, waarin hij zocht naar evenwicht tussen romantische gevoeligheid en strenge compositieregels. Het resultaat: een compromis tussen muzikale taal en vormgeving. Zijn muziek is ingetogen en fijnzinnig, wat tot uiting komt in het pianotrio, dat Fauré schreef op verzoek van zijn uitgever Jacques Durand. Toen al doof en geplaagd door vermoeidheid, kostte het hem een jaar om het muziekstuk af te ronden.

Frank Théodore Martin (1890-1974) woonde lange tijd in Nederland, waar hij ook stierf. Zijn voormalig woonhuis in Naarden, is als museum nog steeds op afspraak te bezoeken. Martins werk is gematigd modern, met de nadruk op ritmiek. Met combinaties van instrumenten, met zelfs een elektrische gitaar, creëerde hij vaak bijzondere klankkleuren. In de jaren 20 experimenteerde Martin met volksmuziek en ritmes uit India, Bulgarije, en de oudheid. Zijn Trio Sur Des Mélodies Populaires Irlandaises for Piano, Violin an Violoncello, is daarvan het resultaat. Er zit nog een verhaal aan deze compositie. Martin ontmoette in Parijs een Amerikaanse muziekliefhebber, met Ierse wortels. Deze vroeg hem een pianotrio te componeren met populaire Ierse melodieën. Martin ging akkoord en koos minder bekende Ierse melodieën, die hij kunstzinnig verwerkte. De Amerikaan kon zijn originele stijl niet waarderen en trok zijn verzoek terug.

Artist(s)

Altenberg Trio Wien

The Altenberg Trio of Vienna came into being when Claus-Christian Schuster and Martin Hornstein, members of the Vienna Schubert Trio and Amiram Ganz, the initiator and violinist of the Shostakovitch Trio joined forces in January 1994. All three musicians had earned critical acclaim and world wide recognition with their performances in the world's most important chamber music venues for many years prior to the formation of the Altenberg Trio. Since its debut at the 1994 Salzburg Mozart Week, the Altenberg Trio has enjoyed great success with performances in the United States, Canada and Europe. The ensemble regularly appears in such distinguished venues as London, Wigmore Hall and was invited to perform at the Prague Spring Festival and the Orlando Festival. In Australia the trio performs often at the Salzburg Mozarteum and presents a regular concert at Vienna's famed "Musikverein".
The "Viennese Touch", for which the Altenberg Trio has often been commended, is not simply a question of musical technique - phrasing, vibrato or portamento, dynamic or agogic accents, although these are a part of it. The Viennese style represents a specific artistic orientation, rooted in a city that was the center of an empire and the crossroads of many distinctive cultures in the 18th and 19th centuries. This style may be best-known outside of Austria through the city's music, because that is the art, whose stylistic refinements have made the strongest international impression. But it is also reflected in literature, painting (Klimt), architecture, psychology (Freud), philosophy (Wittgenstein) and even cuisines. That is one reason why it makes sense, for a pianist, violinist and cellist to form a trio named after a poet. Peter Altenberg (1859-1919), whose life and works reflect the spirit of an era when literature, science, art and music were closely interactive.

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Amiram Ganz

Violinist Amiram Ganz was born in Montevideo. He began to study violin in Uruguay with Israel Chorberg, the Leopold Auer-pupil Ilya Fidlon, and Jorge Risi. At the age of eleven he won the Jeunesses Musicales Contest and then continued his studies with Richard Burgin in the U.S.A. and Alberto Lysy at the International Academy of Chamber Music in Rome. Studying on a scholarship at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory between 1974 and 1979 he met Victor Pikaisen, who became his teacher. As finalist and award winner of several international competitions (Long-Thibaud/Paris, ARD/Munich, etc.), he became first concert master of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg in 1980. From 1987 until the foundation of the Altenberg Trio he was the violinist of the Shostakovitch Trio, appearing at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow, etc. In 1994 he became a founding member of the Altenberg Trio of Vienna with pianist Claus-Christian Schuster and cellist Martin Hornstein, who was succeeded in 2004 by Alexander Gebert. With the Altenberg Trio Ganz performes in Europe and North America.
As a soloist he has collaborated with conductors Alain Lombard, Günter Kehr, Theodor Guschlbauer, Marc Soustrot, James Judd, Hiroyuki Iwaki, Nicolas Pasquet und others. He teaches violin and chamber music in Vienna Conservatory (Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität). Amiram Ganz plays a violin built in Saluzzo in 1686 by Goffredo Cappa (1644-1717); it was made available to the trio by an anonymous patron.

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Claus-Christian Schuster

Martin Hornstein

Composer(s)

Maurice Ravel

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies and only one religious work. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

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Frank Théodore Martin

Frank Martin (15 September 1890 – 21 November 1974) was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands. Born into a Huguenot family in the Eaux-Vives quarter of Geneva, the youngest of the ten children of a Calvinist pastor named Charles Martin, Frank Martin was improvising at the piano even before he started school. At the age of nine, despite having received no musical instruction, he wrote some complete songs. He attended a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion when he was 12 and was deeply affected. Respecting his parents' wishes, he studied mathematics and physics for two years at Geneva University, but all the time he was also working at his composition and...

Frank Martin (15 September 1890 – 21 November 1974) was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands.
Born into a Huguenot family in the Eaux-Vives quarter of Geneva, the youngest of the ten children of a Calvinist pastor named Charles Martin, Frank Martin was improvising at the piano even before he started school. At the age of nine, despite having received no musical instruction, he wrote some complete songs. He attended a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion when he was 12 and was deeply affected.
Respecting his parents' wishes, he studied mathematics and physics for two years at Geneva University, but all the time he was also working at his composition and studying the piano, composition and harmony with his first music teacher Joseph Lauber (1864–1953), a Geneva composer and by that time a leading light of the city's musical scene. In the 1920s, Martin worked closely for a time with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze from whom he learned much about rhythm and musical theory. Between 1918 and 1926 Martin lived successively in Zurich, Rome and Paris. Compositions of the period show him searching for an authentic musical voice of his own.
In 1926 he established the Chamber Music Society of Geneva which, for the next ten years, he conducted, as well as contributing on the clavichord and piano. During this period he was also teaching musical theory and improvisation at the Jaques-Dalcroze Institute, and chamber music at the Geneva Conservatory.
Works[edit] The Petite Symphonie Concertante of 1944/45 made Martin's international reputation and is the best known of his orchestral works, as the early Mass is the best known of his choral compositions and the Jedermann monologues for baritone and piano or orchestra the best known of his works for solo voice. Other Martin pieces include a full-scale symphony (1936–1937), two piano concertos, a harpsichord concerto, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, a concerto for seven wind instruments, and a series of six one-movement works he called "ballades" for various solo instruments with piano or orchestra.
Among a dozen major scores for the theater are operatic settings of Shakespeare (Der Sturm [ The Tempest ], in August Wilhelm Schlegel's German version [1952–1955]) and Molière (Monsieur de Pourceaugnac [1960–1962]), and the satirical fairy tale La Nique à Satan (Thumbing Your Nose at Satan [1928 - 1931]). His works on sacred texts and subjects, which include another large-scale theater piece, Le Mystère de la Nativité (The Mystery of the Nativity) 1957/1959, are widely considered to rank among the finest religious compositions of the 20th century. Fellow Swiss musician Ernest Ansermet, a champion of his music from 1918 on, conducted recordings of many of Martin's works, such as the oratorio for soloists, double chorus & orchestra In Terra Pax (1944), with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.[1] Martin developed his mature style based on a very personal use of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone technique, having become interested in this around 1932, but did not abandon tonality. Rather his preference for lean textures and his habitual rhythmic vehemence are at the furthest possible remove from Schoenberg's hyper-romanticism. Some of Martin's most inspired music comes from his last decade. He worked on his last cantata, Et la vie l'emporta, until ten days before his death. He died in Naarden, the Netherlands, and was buried in Geneva at the Cimetière des Rois.

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Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré was a French Romantic composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Nocturnes for piano and the songs Après un rêve and Clair de lune. Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.

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