The Gould Piano Trio have already recorded the two
Mendelssohn Piano Trios, albeit with a different cellist, Martin Storey,
and that remains available at budget price (Naxos 8.555063 –
review).
Their chosen tempi have remained remarkably consistent in the intervening
years, with the new recordings seconds faster overall. For all the
virtues of their earlier set, however, I’ve chosen to compare the new
Gould Trio with the Florestan Trio (Hyperion CDA67485 – Recording of
the Month:
review
and
August
2010 Download Roundup), and with Julia Fischer, Daniel Müller-Schott
and Jonathan Gilad (PentaTone PTC5186085 –
review).
In 2010 I wrote of that Hyperion recording: ‘Reviewing a recent
release of these trios from Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma
(Sony Classical 88697 52192 2), I turned for comparison to these award-winning
Florestan Trio versions and found them to be preferable – the superb
winning over the (very) good, without resorting to any gimmicks, just
staying faithful to Mendelssohn’s markings’. Colin Clarke thought
these the first choice, too – see his
review.
With just the two Trios on offer, the Hyperion playing time is shorter
than the generously timed new Champs Hill but downloading makes up
for that: just £5.99 from
hyperion-records.co.uk
in mp3 or CD-quality lossless sound, with a pdf version of the booklet
to boot. Similarly the PentaTone can be yours downloaded from
eclassical.com
for just $10.62 in mp3 and 16-bit lossless, though 24-bit is more
expensive at $19.48.
Before you can get to the music on Champs Hill there’s one small
nuisance: I can never see the point of adding a cardboard slip cover
with exactly the same cover shot on the front and the same information
as the CD on the back. This one is not shrink-wrapped as some appear
to be, making the CD case hard to extract, but it’s superfluous and
best discarded.
The performance of the First Piano Trio is very good when taken
on its own merits. It’s apparent from the start that the performance
is going to be slightly mellower than from the Florestan Trio, though
the recording may be partly responsible for the effect: the stop-watch
indicates only a very slightly slower time – 9:17 against 9:08, with
Julia Fischer
et al slightly slower still at 9:39. As so often
happens, those paper differences are less apparent in reality.
The contrast is more marked in the
andante con moto tranquillo
slow movement. The three elements of that direction are really at
odds with one another; the Gould Trio and especially the PentaTone
team tend to emphasise the
andante part, at 6:19 and 6:58 respectively,
while the Florestans pay more attention to the
con moto. Without
ever sounding brusque or cool, they put a shade less emotion into
the music than the Gould Trio or Fischer and her team, but all three
achieve pretty effective
tranquillo playing.
There’s a degree of unanimity about the tempo for the
scherzo:
all three trios give deft performances. The finale, too, is well performed
by all three, with very little difference in overall timings. Of
the three performances, the Gould Trio are more prescient of the style
of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in this movement, with the Florestan sounding
a little subdued by comparison. It’s chiefly in the second movement,
however, that the Gould see the music in the most romantic vein.
You won’t be surprised to learn that much the same comments apply
to Trio No.2, with the Gould noticeably slightly slower than the Florestan
in the first two movements and much closer in the last two. It’s
on the PentaTone recording, however, that the players really go to
town with a very slow tempo for the second movement. I played their
version of this movement first and expected to find the second half
of the direction
andante espressivo unduly exaggerated. In
the event I thought their interpretation a trifle cool, finding fewer
of the ‘darker tones’ than Michael Cookson mentions in his review:
see link above.
Other reviewers have commented on the lightness and clarity of the
Florestan Trio performances and that is certainly apparent in their
fairly brisk – but not brusque – account of this movement. At a considerably
faster speed, they seem to me to be if anything more expressive than
Fischer and her team, but I imagine that the Gould Trio, who fall
between the two, will seem to many listeners to provide an ideal compromise.
In the finale again Tchaikovsky, whose own Piano Trio lay nearly forty
years in the future (1881/2) came to mind more readily than in other
performances.
The works for cello and piano are attractive makeweights – actually
rather more than makeweights – on the Champs Hill recording when the
chief rivals offer only the two Piano Trios.
Overall, then, I was perfectly happy with the Gould Trio recordings.
If I retain a penchant for the somewhat more business-like Florestan
accounts – slightly more cognisant of Mendelssohn’s classical inheritance
which Benjamin Frith stresses in the Champs Hill booklet – that’s
a matter of personal taste. I could well imagine that others would
see it differently, especially if you like the finale of both trios
to sound really powerful. It’s only when heard together in
Building
a Library style, however, that the differences are magnified.
All three versions are well recorded, but only the PentaTone comes
as an SACD or 24-bit download. The extra clarity of 24/96 is apparent
and will appeal especially to those with younger and sharper ears.
If I have suggested that the Champs Hill recording makes the Gould
Trio sound mellower, that isn’t meant as a criticism; in fact it’s
well balanced.
While on the subject of Mendelssohn Piano Trios, let me mention
another Hyperion recording, this time on their budget-price Hyperion
Helios label and of music from a different Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel.
Without going as far as those who rate the highly talented sister
higher than her more famous brother, her Piano Trio in D, Op.11, well
performed by the Dartington Piano Trio on CDH55078, coupled with one
by Clara Schumann in g minor, Op.17, is well worth investigating,
especially at the modest price – CD or download from
hyperion-records.co.uk
(mp3 and lossless, with pdf booklet).
Brian Wilson
