Boulanger Trio TCHAIKOVSKY - JUON Piano Trios

“In Juon’s piano trio”, as the members of the Boulanger Trio find, “we plunge into the most profound recesses of the soul. Everything acquires existential significance. This work truly captivates us: so much occurs within such brief moments”. This is where our performers find a bridge that connects Juon’s kaleidoscopic tone poem with Peter Tchaikovsky’s colossal Piano Trio, op. 50, a musical epitaph for pianist and conductor Nikolai Rubinstein, who had been Tchaikovsky’s friend and mentor.

Rubinstein had ensured that the young Tchaikovsky was allowed to enter the newly founded Moscow Conservatory while taking him up as a resident in his own home. “He looked after my every need like a child’s nurse”, Tchaikovsky wrote to his family in Saint Petersburg. Rubinstein not only made sure

that Tchaikovsky wore appropriately elegant clothing, but he took him to the opera and to concerts while introducing him to his circle of colleagues and friends, playing out his connections to draw their attention to his protégé’s compositions.

His unexpected passing in 1881, when he was only 45, must have profoundly shattered the young Tchaikovsky, who dedicated the only piano trio he ever wrote to his late friend, adding the subtitle À la mémoire d’un grand artiste.

The work consists of only two monumental, thematically related movements. Beginning with a heartfelt cello cantilena, the first one is an extensive elegy or Pezzo elegiaco: an immense variety of musical ideas flow together in this sonata form with exposition, development, and reprise. The second movement consists in a seemingly endless set of variations. According to his friend Nikolai Kashkin, Tchaikovsky wanted to “paint a musical portrait of Rubinstein in different phases of his life”.

Whether that be true or not, this is indeed a musical broadsheet of illustrated character variations. Particular mention can be made of the third variation, a brilliant piano caprice, the fifth, where the piano imitates bell chimes, the sixth in form of a waltz, and the elaborate fugue in the eighth. The twelfth variation-cum-finale sets in powerfully and energetically, but harks back to the first movement by concluding with a poignant funeral march.

Chief Vienna music critic Eduard Hanslick found that Tchaikovsky’s trio, despite “a number of original traits and successful turns of phrase”, belonged to the kind of “quasi-suicidal compositions that destroy their own effect because of their merciless length”. Today, however, it is regarded as one of the milestones in the genre of chamber music with piano.

Jonian Ilias Kadesha / Nicholas Rimmer ENESCU - RAVEL - SKALKOTTAS

I'm very excited about the release of this CD with my trio colleague Jonian Ilias Kadesha. He chose amazing pieces for his debut CD - all united by the influence of folk music. If you don't yet know Enescu's 3rd sonata you must hear it - for me it's without question one of the greatest violin sonatas of the 20th century.
Nikos Skalkottas is a composer I was completely unfamiliar with, but he's a fascinating figure. He studied with Schoenberg in Berlin and then returned to his native Greece where he was unfortunately never recognised and he died in relative poverty and obscurity. The two Suites we recorded here are full of energy and grittiness, despite their brevity, they pack quite a punch!
And to complete the CD we play Ravel's wonderful Sonata (which was in fact premiered by Enescu) and Tzigane. (Nicholas Rimmer)

Göttinger Symphonie Orchester / Christoph-Mathias Mueller CLAUDE DEBUSSY The Edgar Allan Poe Operas

Admired for his ability to manipulate tone color, Claude Debussy’s opera Pelleas et Melisande is regarded as a special masterpiece, even if it is a solitary one. Debussy was not known for opera. While Pelleas et Melisande was his only successful opera during his lifetime, it was not the only opera he composed. He made plans for future operatic projects, and he dedicated himself to two projects based on texts by Edgar Allen Poe. As the final years of his life were plagued by poor health, Debussy worked on “La Chute de la maison Usher” (The Fall of the House of Usher) until just before his death. The composer was distraught at the thought of leaving the work unfinished. He also was working on “Le Diable dans le Beffroi” (The Devil in the Belfry), but this work only survived in sketch form. English musicologist Robert Orledge, who is renowned for his expertise in early twentieth century French music, reconstructed both of these works with immense sensitivity to Debussy’s style, filling in all of the missing passages. While Debussy was alive, he promised the New York Metropolitan Opera the premiere of both of the operas, believing he would survive through their completion. This production featuring the Gottinger Symphonie Orchester is the world premiere of the works, in the way that Debussy would have had the Metropolitan Opera perform them. (Arkiv Music)