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)