Into the lists with their Mendelssohn trios come the
young and talented Gould Piano Trio – Lucy Gould, violin, Martin Storey,
cello and Benjamin Frith, piano. There is no shortage of competitors
and even at budget price there must be sufficient tonal variety and
musical acuity to attract attention to the playing. I found them more
convincing in the C minor, Op 66 trio than in the earlier D minor. In
the somewhat-too-recessed ambience of Naxos’s currently favoured Potton
Hall in Suffolk the Gould begin the Op 49 with conviction but rather
fey phrasing, which threatens to sabotage Mendelssohn’s Molto allegro
agitato marking. Their commitment to flexible phrasing springs from
admirable roots but comes at the cost of architectural coherence. In
the Andante con moto tranquillo I found their rubato slightly
affected, despite Gould’s expressive nuances, and the point-making scherzo
somewhat unyielding. Throughout I found them straining too hard, fusing
over-nuanced phrasing with disparities of tempi.
If the Op 49 trio never really settled then I found
the Op 66 a good deal better. Alighting on a tempo giusto they
stick to it; expressive devices are put to the service of the work as
a whole. The vigorous first movement is assertive and well moulded;
the Andante expressivo is delivered with simplicity and
gains all the more for it. Good dynamics inform the Scherzo which is
properly fleet. The Finale could perhaps do with greater unanimity and
weight of string tone but throughout Benjamin Frith provides the motor
necessary to galvanize his partners.
Throughout some extraneous noises can be heard – cello
rasps especially and a virtuoso amount of anticipatory sniffing from
Lucy Gould, which is normally of little account to me but may be off-putting
on repeated hearing. For patrician recordings the Stern-Rose-Istomin
traversals are on Sony SMK 64519. Historically minded aficionados of
great playing will want the Cortot-Thibaud-Casals recording of No 1,
available on Biddulph LHW002; the perceptive will also want the Sammons-Tertis-Murdoch
recording in its viola arrangement on Biddulph LAB023. These are the
earliest electrical recordings of both works and still worthy of intense
study.
Jonathan Woolf
Gould Piano Trio