MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... 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 Plain text for smartphones & printers

Support us financially by purchasing this from

Bohuslav MARTINŮ (1890-1959)
The Complete Piano Trios
Piano Trio No. 3 in C major, H 332 (1951) [20:46]
Bergerettes, H 275 (1939) [22:00]
Piano Trio No. 2 in D minor, H 327 (1950) [16:45]
Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor “Cinq pičces brčves,” H 193 (1930) [11:36]
Smetana Trio (Jitka Čechová (piano), Jiří Vodička (violin), Jan Páleníček (cello))
rec. May-December 2015 Martínek Studio, Prague
SUPRAPHON SU4197-2 [71:30]

This disc contains all of Martinů’s piano trios, one pair of works from the 1930s and another from the 1950s. It serves as a good introduction to the music of the great Slavic neoclassicist. The musicians are the most recent iteration of the Smetana Trio, founded in 1934 by Josef Páleníček, father of the current cellist, Jan. Jiří Vodička is concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic, and pianist Jitka Čechová recently completed eight discs of Smetana piano works for Supraphon.

Admirers of Martinů sometimes wonder why his music is not more often performed. One reason that he remains on the edge of the canon is that he spent most of his career in exile. He wrote two of these pieces in France, and two in the United States of America. Some believe that the fertile Martinů simply wrote too much music, with around four hundred compositions. But these trios are all of high quality, making this listener want more, not less Martinů.

The 1930 Piano Trio No. 1 (“Cinq pičces brčves”) is a series of short movements which might be called lapidary, if they were not so percussive and rhythmic. They are busy, like much neoclassical music of late 1920s, and while they exhibit the rhythmic energy of later works, only the fourth movement has a characteristic Martinů sound.

The Bergerettes of 1939 offer another set of five short movements. But here are the distinctive open harmonies and swinging melodies, the syncopations, busy figurations, ostinatos, and lyrical tunes emerging from misty beginnings that make Martinů distinctive. These calming, upbeat pastoral pieces may seem at odds with the anxieties of pre-war Europe, but Martinů addressed these in the disquieting Double Concerto of 1938 and the Field Mass of 1939.

Martinů wrote the Piano Trio No. 2 for the inauguration of the M.I.T. Hayden Library in 1950. Along with Piano Trio No. 3 of the following year, it joins a feeling of lightness and celebration to classical forms and proportions. They are both more lyrical and more serious than the trios from Paris.

The only other recording containing all of Martinů’s piano trios is by the Trio des Iscles (Grave GRCD4), which is not competitive with the Smetana Trio. The French players race through all four pieces. They seem manic and shallow, while the Smetana Trio is thoughtful and unruffled. Appropriate tempi enable sharper rhythms to emerge, with great power. The result is exciting rather than superficial. The Smetana plays these pieces like the great music they are.

Richard Kraus

 

 



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos 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