MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb for £12 postage paid World-wide.

 

Musicweb Purchase button

 

 

Petr FIALA (b.1943)
Trio for violin, cello and piano (1980) [13:57]
Sylvie BODOROVÁ (b.1954)
Megiddo per violino, violoncello e pianoforte (2001) [11:33]
Petr EBEN (1929-2007)
Piano Trio (1986) [19:46]
Puella Trio: Terezie Fialová (piano); Lenka Matejáková (violin); Markéta Vrbková (cello)
rec. Josef Dobrovský Hall, Convent of the Brothers of Mercy, Brno, January 2009
ARCO DIVA UP 0114-2131 [45:28]
Experience Classicsonline




Once again Jiři Štilec and the Arco Diva team have delved into some enticing repertoire and produced a disc of contrast and vitality. The stimulus for this particular release is the eightieth anniversary of Eben's birth; he died in 2007.

The opening work is Petr Fiala's Trio. Written in 1980 it's a taut, toned tightly constructed four movement work that begins with a short-winded and witty Giocoso. In the slow movement the piano's glissandi - I don't know whether the pianist of the Puella Trio, Terezie Fialová, is a relation of the composer (daughter?) but she plays splendidly - are reminiscent of the cimbalon, and the shimmering, slow-moving string melancholy imparts its own reflective gloss on proceedings too. The developing chorale on the piano - something of a Czech speciality - also contains its saturnine moments. There's a kind of virtuoso cadenza cum etude for the violin in the third movement and a slow cello passage to balance it. For the finale Fiala invites the piano to parade its virtuoso credentials, the strings reliant on contrapuntal assurance. Slowly the chorale - Fiala is a distinguished choral director in Brno and it re-appears with vocalised power - emerges once again and leads to further reminiscence.

Sylvie Bodorová wrote Megiddo in 2001, a work that owed its genesis to a visit the composer made to Israel when she was working on her excellent Judas Maccabeus. She was there to study aspects of ritual singing as well as particular approaches to melody and melismatic singing. Things start with a somewhat hieratic determination but the writing is splendidly refined, advancing by Seurat-like brushstrokes or more gaunt and sinewy 'pillars'. Throughout the ear is kept alive by her series of aural devices. Affecting lyricism, quiet and keening, occupies the slow movement; folkloric hues are not far away either though they are, it's true, sublimated. The piano here becomes ever more romantically effusive until the biting, terse end of the movement. The finale, Armagedon, is powerfully rhythmic and driving but ends with quiet reminiscence, as did the Fiala.

Finally we have Eben's 1986 Piano Trio. Eben manages the tricky business of balancing quite terse material with moments of reflective withdrawal. So too he delineates exchanges between the three instruments - in the slow movement in particular - in a highly sophisticated way; leaps, chordal power, tolling textures, warm string lines that are effusive but never glutinous. He also cultivates a post-Mahlerian melos of rapid conjunctions of mood, one that appeals in a Shostakovich-influenced way, not least in its occasional severities. For the toccata-like motion of the finale, its brief folk-like moments, and a kind of discreetly modified boogie rhythm, no praise can be too high.

I'm glad to see that Karel Janovicky has been enlisted to carry out the full translations. The booklet also sports some ritzy pictures of the musicians. The disc is only forty-five minutes in length but the rewards far outweigh that possible limitation.

Jonathan Woolf 

see also review by Dominy Clements July RECORDING OF THE MONTH

 
 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.