Trio Wanderer JOSEPH HAYDN Piano Trios

Prompted by a commission from a London publisher, Haydn took up the composition of piano trios, that is, sonatas for keyboard accompanied by violin and cello, on a grand scale in 1784. 

By that time, piano trios had become extremely popular with ‘amateurs’ (Liebhaber) – non-professionals from the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie – and their composition promised financial success. The piano carries the main burden of the compositional substance in these works and always forms the centre of the instrumental texture, around which the violin and cello are grouped. The tasks assigned to the stringed instruments are less structural than colouristic, although Haydn frequently allows the violin to break free from the piano part, entrusting it with independent ideas and sometimes allowing it to engage in dialogue with the piano.

Since forming in the late ’80s, Trio Wanderer have—with only one change of personnel—become one of the finest piano trios on the concert circuit. Surprisingly, they’ve recorded little Haydn, so this album is very welcome. The French trio have a lovely spring in their musical step and Haydn suits them to perfection. Fast movements flash past in a spirit of sheer delight while the slower ones are savored but never milked, and their tightly focused, well-balanced sound and restrained use of vibrato is very attractive.

Trio Wanderer FAURÉ - PIERNÉ Trios avec Piano

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’.

"the Wanderers’ versions rank with those of Domus (Hyperion) and Pascal Rogé and friends (Decca)... Harmonia Mundi has done the trio and Tamestit’s voluptuous viola proud. The sound is sumptuous, almost symphonic in scale and expansiveness, especially in the surging Brahmsian outer allegros. The intimate Fauré has rarely sounded more dramatic or passionate." (Hugh Canning / Sunday Times)

Trio Wanderer SCHUBERT Trio Op. 100 - The Trout Quintet

Two of Franz Schubert's favorite works are coupled here on a disc celebrating the 30th anniversary of Trio Wanderer. One of his last compositions, the Op.100 Piano Trio was among the few late works Schubert heard performed before his death. The Trout was composed when Schubert was 22, but was published posthumously. This release includes a 2017 harmonia mundi catalog.

The Wanderers are among the elite piano, violin and cello combinations, and these great works are signature pieces: they take their name from the Schubert song and these pieces are cornerstones of their repertoire [previously available separately].

"The Wanderers and their friends play both works with irresistible freshness and brio, making one listen afresh to the glories of Schubert." The Sunday Times [The Trout]

“This is a finely controlled, highly polished performance of the Trout, and the recorded sound is excellent, too… Altogether, the performance is most impressive in the way that its verve is matched with such a strong sense of integration and balance.” Gramophone, September 2003 [The Trout]

”If the playing weren’t so delicate, refined, intelligent and colourful it might have felt more than a bit one-sided. As it is Trio Wanderer convince that this is a fully valid view of Schubert, brilliantly and feelingly executed.” Chamber Choice, BBC Music Magazine, April 2008 [Trio]

Trio Wanderer FRANZ SCHUBERT Trios op. 99 & 100

As fine a set of Schubert's piano trios as has ever been recorded, this 2008 release by the Trio Wanderer is true both to the letter and the spirit of Schubert's scores. There's joy, strength, sentimentality, and exaltation in the French trio's performances, a sense of openness and wonder. As in earlier recordings of piano trios by Brahms and Saint-Saëns, the Trio Wanderer once again demonstrates its mastery of ensemble playing, but there is something special about the playing of the music of the composer from whose famous song the group took its name.

It is, in a word, lyricism. One can almost hear voices singing in the legato lines of violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian and cellist Raphaël Pidoux and in the rounded phrasing with discrete but judicious applications of the sustaining pedal of pianist Vincent Coq. While the Allegros do not lack for force and the fortes do not want for power, it is in the expressive Andantes and intimate pianissimos that the Trio Wanderer's performances take flight. Recorded in clear, close, and immediate sound, this disc demands to be heard by listeners interested in the repertoire or the composer. (James Leonard)

Trio Wanderer BEETHOVEN Complete Piano Trios

This is the Trio Wanderer’s 25th-birthday present to itself, and within the slimline package lie riches indeed. We begin with Op 1, the point at which Beethoven announced his presence to the wider world in a genre carefully chosen so as to avoid immediate comparison with Haydn or Mozart (which would have been the case with the piano sonata, string quartet or symphony). It was also a canny financial move, for the amateur trio market was booming.

The Wanderer are particularly impressive in this opus, capturing the puppyish energy with which No 1 opens and imbuing its slow movement with an affection that is almost unassuming: pitched just right for early Beethoven. Time and again we’re reminded that this is an ensemble who have no need for point-making, either to their audience or to one another, trusting the music to make its own impact. And what an impact. We experience anew the ducking and diving ebullience of the finale of the First Trio, the sheer inventiveness of the Presto of No 2 – with its razor-sharp accentuation precise and the phrasing-off of the violin line startling – and the dizzying Prestissimo conclusion to No 3.

Beethoven has learnt from his erstwhile teacher, but the influence is confidently transformed into something all his own. And though the piano-writing in these trios is overtly virtuoso, it never threatens to overbalance the other two lines, thanks to the Wanderer’s finely attuned collective ear.

Equally compelling is their understanding of the depth of the writing: the extraordinarily profound slow movement of No 2 (which they judge better than the Beaux Arts, who are just too slow here) or the mysterious opening to the great C minor Trio, No 3, though the period-instrument Staier/Sepec/Queyras recording is even more dramatic.

Among the other early works, the Wanderer’s reading of the Allegretto, WoO39, doesn’t charm quite as much as the Florestan in their benchmark set. But in WoO38 they relish the Haydnesque Scherzo to the full. The Kakadu Variations are also fundamentally early, with Beethoven adding a slow introduction and coda much later. Although he was a master of transforming the musical graffiti of others into great art, here he contents himself with sending up Wenzel Müller’s theme, promising much in the deeply serious introduction, only for the theme itself to arrive as a huge anticlimax. Trio Wanderer convey Beethoven’s intentional bathos perfectly.

And as we travel with them, the plaudits just continue. The Wanderer revel in Op 11’s easeful qualities and delight in the inventiveness of the variations that close the trio. Delight is on show in the Op 44 Variations too, another opportunity for Beethoven to dabble in the commonplace.

Throughout the set, we’re in the surest of hands and the Wanderer are keen to point up the gentler side of Beethoven’s character as well as exploring his redoubtable dramatic genius. Occasionally I found myself hankering after a greater sense of mystery: in the Largo assai of the Ghost, the other-worldly aspect is arguably revealed more tellingly by the Florestan and the plangently timbred Staier/Sepec/Queyras trio, though the unfettered, almost unhinged energy of the finale is wonderfully caught by the Wanderer. And at the moment where the theme of the slow movement of the Archduke is revealed, they miss the last degree of rapture (though they avoid the pitfalls of too slow a tempo, a trap into which the Beaux Arts fall). To experience that intensity to the full, you need to go back in time: to Thibaud, Casals and Cortot or to Zukerman, du Pré and Barenboim. That said, the Wanderer are again wonderfully natural in the sprint to the finishing line in the Presto of the same work’s finale. And let’s not overlook Op 70 No 2, the Ghost’s convivial sibling, where the Wanderer relish the brilliantly wrought double-variation Allegretto, the insouciance of the major key set against a driving C minor, while the energy and concerto-ish spotlighting of the finale reminds us that here we have not only one of the finest trios around today but also three remarkable personalities in their own right. Harmonia Mundi complete the pleasure with perceptive notes and a recording that combines warmth and clarity. (Harriet Smith / Gramophone)

Trio Wanderer SMETANA Piano Trio - LISZT Elegies

The combination of Smetana, one of the 19th century's more conservative composers, and Liszt, one of its radicals, is not a common one on recordings, but after you finish with this extraordinary album by France's Trio Wanderer it will seem to make perfect sense. It is the idea of the elegy, a popular one in the 19th century, that ties the program together. Several of the Liszt works involved are designated as elegies, but even those that are not somehow touch on remembrances of things past. The Smetana Trio in G minor, Op. 15, was written after the death of the composer's four-year-old daughter, Bedriska, of scarlet fever in 1855. The Trio Wanderer gives a very fine performance of this work, capturing the violent contrasts in the opening movement between moods of nostalgic memory and the fervent grief of the present. But it is the works by Liszt -- not a composer known for his chamber music -- that really set this release apart. All come from late in his career, and several are transcriptions of earlier works. These are not the usual sort of utilitarian Romantic-era transcription, however. Instead, they represent new stages in Liszt's thinking about the work, and about the events that inspired them, such as, in the case of the violin-and-piano version of the song Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth (The Cell at Nonnenwerth, track 2), his final excursion with his married lover, the Countess Marie d'Agoult. Liszt does not simply reproduce the original song, but adds a downbeat conclusion, as if pessimistically recollecting the story. All of the Liszt pieces have some kind of fluid identity, and they reveal a side of the composer's late style that has been there for all to see but hasn't been much investigated due to the tendency to place the "work" on a pedestal. The emphasis on the idea of elegy illuminates both Liszt and Smetana and reveals a largely ignored connection: one of the few champions of the Smetana trio when it appeared in the 1850s was none other than Franz Liszt. Notes by Jan Wolfrum, in French, English, and German, provide deep but highly readable background, and the engineering is nonpareil. Superb, groundbreaking, and quite moving music-making. (James Manheim)

Trio Wanderer ANTONÍN DVORÁK Piano Trios Op. 65 & 90

The Trio Wanderer pays tribute to Dvořák and his last two trios. Alongside the sombre interiority and fiery intensity of the Trio No.3 in F minor, this programme presents a new version of the famous Dumky Trio, to which the Wanderers owed their first great success on record. Passionate and melancholy by turns, it is also the most innovative and the freest of Dvořák’s trios. A fine symbol for the Trio Wanderer, which has just reached its 30th year of existence without ever ceasing to surprise and touch us. Happy anniversary and hats off! (Harmonia Mundi)

 The Trio Wanderer, now 30 years old, sounds as sparkling and zestful as ever in Dvorák’s infectious “Dumky” trio, Op 90, truly a work to lift spirits, though not without melancholy. The last of the composer’s works for the medium, it bursts with Slavonic dance rhythms and lyrical folk melody, wonderfully captured by this incisive French ensemble. The Op 65 trio is less well known but deserving of attention. The passionate, big-boned style of its opening Allegro brings to mind the style of Dvorák’s great friend, Brahms, though the Scherzo returns to more familiar, springy Dvorák terrain and the energetic finale could be by no other composer. This is virtuosic playing of a high order. (Fiona Maddocks /The Guardian)

Trio Wanderer / Christophe Gaugué JOHANNES BRAHMS Piano Quartet Op. 60 - Piano Trio Op. 8

A decade has passed since Trio Wanderer gave us a superb set of Brahms’ Piano Trios with the first Piano Quartet as filler. That recording set a benchmark thanks to the ensemble’s ideal balance of elegance and expressive intensity, so this sequel is long overdue.

The rarely heard first version of the Op. 8 Trio is a fascinating adjunct to that set and the Wanderers tackle the work with a different mindset, helping to delineate the self-critical composer’s maturing concision. They don’t linger as they did during the lengthy first movement, which Brahms initially over-egged with five themes, several of which were replaced by the lovely secondary subject.

Hanslick thought the fugato passage as inappropriate as a schoolboy Latin quotation in a love poem and the composer took note and cut it. The marvellous Scherzo he left well alone but for a few nips and tucks, however he wisely remodelled the middle of the slow movement; the mood swings of the original are superfluous with such animated flanking movements.

The last movement meanders through some tortured passages with a good third of the movement later excised and the clunky conclusion scrapped. While it’s an interesting example of a composer’s distillation I suspect most who love the familiar revision will only listen to this version once or twice as the younger man’s gaucheries wear thin.

The Piano Quartet, Op. 60 is another matter; a composer at the peak of his powers, a masterwork carefully crafted over 20 years with extraordinary cogency and thematic unity. This is a carefully judged performance of subtlety and discretion, a slow burn reading that lets the thematic development carry the narrative.

The Wanderers’ coolness at the opening soon thaws out but they keep a firm grip on the argument; they don’t overstate the sighing “Clara” figure in line with their classically poised view of the movement. The Scherzo has plenty of drive but the light touch avoids the overbearing. For the Andante they take the composer’s marking literally so it is a flowing interlude rather than a dirge while the Finale is more pensive than tragic.

If this implies a Brahms-lite quality rest assured that the Wanderers’ effortless panache and rhythmic energy compensates. It’s a valid alternative to the Capuçon/Angelich/Caussé reading on Virgin; an elegant cabernet rather than a big boofy shiraz. Sound is superbly present if a little opaque compared to the stunning transparency of the earlier set. (Warwick Arnold)

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