This is certainly not a unique coupling. The Trio Bamberg, for
example, recorded the same two trios on Thorofon Classics CTH 2447, though
it’s not a disc I’ve heard. One of the interesting conjunctions
is that the two chamber works were written a year apart, Brahms’s in
1854 when he was just twenty-one, though he was to revise it in 1889, and
Smetana’s in 1855 in the immediate aftermath of his young
daughter’s death. There is therefore a chronological logic in thus
coupling them, even though they do occupy rather different aesthetic and
expressive positions. However, I tend to welcome this kind of coupling,
given that, in Czech terms, Brahms always gets coupled with the younger
Dvořák.
The Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio is Mark Kaplan (violin), Clancy Newman
(cello) and Yael Weiss (piano). Kaplan is by some way the most experienced
and has long been a notable chamber player. There is much that is fine,
instrumentally, collectively and tonally but they play unevenly. True, they
play the Brahms’ first movement exposition repeat, which is welcome,
but they can be rather foursquare, and the general tenor of their approach
in this opening movement, at least, is rather portly for so essentially
youthful a work. As a result the music tends toward sectionality, occasional
lumpy phrasing, and lacks the urgency and sweep it needs. The scherzo, and
certainly the slow movement, taken at a rapt tempo, work considerably
better.
Smetana’s Trio is curiously argued. At points they sound more
bad-tempered than anguished, and at other points they sound positively
non-committal. Understatement is certainly no vice, but soliloquies lack
passion, the vital rhythms in the second movement are rather undercooked,
and transitions in the finale are awkward. I don’t know how long
they’ve lived with this work, but it doesn’t seem to be really
under their fingers expressively. It’s a sobering experience listening
to the Suk Trio’s performances of both this trio and the Brahms
alongside these ones. In the Smetana, the Suk is passionate, biting,
intense, personalised, eloquent and rhythmically knowing. In the Brahms they
are urgent and sweeping, tonally congruent, and always keep the music alive.
Despite some virtues, I would look elsewhere for these trios.
Jonathan Woolf
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Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio
