News

20 Feb 2022

Trio con Brio Copenhagen wins the German Record Critics’ Award

Trio con Brio Copenhagen’s latest Orchid Classics album wins the German Record Critics’ Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik).

It was singled out among other winning titles including the Berlin Philharmonic, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Quatuor Ebène and Antoine Tamestit.

The 155-member jury overseeing the Award compiled a long list of 294 albums selected among the new releases of the last quarter of year; out of this pool, 31 albums have been granted the prestigious award.

www.schallplattenkritik.de

“Heavy marble chords burst, and velvet melodies spread warmth in the pitch-black night. Melancholy weighs heavily on Arenski’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, but the Trio con Brio Copenhagen pierces it with a streamlined elegance,” wrote music journalist Thilo Braun for the jury on the trio’s album.
“On the other hand, emotional chaos reigns in Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor: does this lightness want to make you laugh? Or is it already madness, raging in the forward-rushing virtuosity? It’s the ambiguity that makes this record shine so bright,” Braun concluded.

06 Feb 2022

Editor’s Choice by Gramophone

ARENSKY; SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Trios (Trio Con Brio Copenhagen)

“… everything adds up to a completely thought-through and deeply felt interpretation… In every way, then, this is an outstanding achievement, and I only hope the disc gets the acclaim it deserves.”

www.gramophone.co.uk

01 Feb 2022

Radiant Russian memorials and unforgettable playing

“… 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 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

www.classical-music.com

25 Jan 2022

Sheer tonal beauty and passion bring to life contrasting Russian works

“… 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…”

www.thestrad.com

05 Nov 2021

Trio con Brio Copenhagen Announces Shostakovich & Arensky piano trios, to be released November 19

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 4 programs with Trio con Brio Copenhagen this month

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:

• Beethoven 1:2 featuring op. 1/3 & 70/1 “Ghost” from a live concert in DR Koncerthuset on P2 www.dr.dk
• Beethoven 2:2 featuring op. 121a “Kakadu-Variations” & 97 “Archduke” from a live concert in Koncerthuset on P2 www.dr.dk
• Podcast “Two plus one is trio” on P2 www.dr.dk
• TV-portrait “Two plus one is trio” on Beethoven and our story of becoming a trio in company with Beethoven on DR2 www.dr.dk

(Photo Nikolaj Lund)