01 Feb 2022
“… The lyric inspiration really flows, with the rich but never over-resonant acoustic of the Royal Danish Academy of Music Concert Hall giving space to each player’s special beauty of tone. While I’ve heard performances of Arensky’s work before which didn’t engrave it on the memory, the Copenhagen trio truly make it live. I won’t forget this disc.”
Performance ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Recording ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
25 Jan 2022
“… this is a very impressive release, contrasting Arensky’s full-blown Romanticism with Shostakovich’s more troubled Soviet-era expression. From the start of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio no.1 we are allured by the players’ sheer tonal beauty, not only in the work’s melancholy lyricism but even in its clanging dissonances, which never seem ugly. There’s boundless joy and passion in Arensky’s Piano Trio, and technique to burn from the players beneath the surface. The slow Elegia movement is breathtakingly tender, with the muted violin and cello creating a magical effect…”
05 Nov 2021
Following the phenomenal success of their recent Beethoven cycle, Trio con Brio Copenhagen returns to Orchid Classics with a triptych of Russian piano trios: two works by Shostakovich framing music by Arensky. The new album, Shostakovich & Arensky Piano Trios, will be released November 19, 2021.
About the album:
The two Russian composers featured on this album lived through turning points in their country’s history. Arensky died in 1906, the same year Shostakovich was born, and their output charts the trajectory of Russian and Soviet political and artistic history during those years. Arensky’s ardent Piano Trio No. 1 was written in 1894, when Russian Romanticism was at its peak. Inspired by young love, the 17-year-old Shostakovich wrote his Piano Trio No. 1 Poème in 1923 in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), finding expression for strong personal emotions via a musical language influenced by film scores. Just over 20 years later, in 1944, Shostakovich wrote his Piano Trio No.2. By making use of Jewish music for the first time, he gave the greatest tragedies of the age a voice, while at the same time creating a music that displays an irrepressible spark of life.
Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No.2 “has been one of the key works in our repertoire since the very beginning of our trio career,” the ensemble explains, noting that the wait to record it was an intentional artistic choice. “We have been waiting many years until we felt ready to make a recording that we feel respects the depths and many layers that this music has.
“For us the piano trio is somehow similar to a confession, a bitter description of a society and war without too much hope.” But through this music that conveys the depths of human emotions during times of great historical turmoil, Trio con Brio Copenhagen hopes to evoke something that can also inspire and uplift listeners today. “I think listening to these compositions hopefully can make us reflect and appreciate what we have.”
(Photo Nikolaj Lund)
27 Oct 2020
DR broadcasts 2 live concerts, a podcast “Two plus one is trio” and a tv-portrait program with the same title on DR P2 and DR2.
Listen & watch via links below:
(Photo Nikolaj Lund)
07 Sep 2020
FROM SOUL TO SOUL
… What sounds already tremendously inspired, exciting and transparent on three CDs has an even greater thrill live at the limit of playability… Rarely do you hear such a furor in the outer movements without ever bringing the poise of the instruments out of balance. In the fantastically beautifully played Andante espressivo it was there again, the moment that penetrates deep into the soul… the moment of deepest, almost painful emotion.
(Photo Dejan Bulut)
24 Jun 2020