Recording
Title: The Piano Trios
Performers: Beaux Arts Trio: Menahem Pressler, Isidore Cohen, Bernard Greenhouse
Year: 1985
Length: 44 minutes
Review
Schubert's second piano trio is a thing of real beauty. Much like Winterreise it is not an untroubled beauty like in his earlier works, it is very much a piece about inner conflict, and while the sun shines through on occasion it is mainly a cloudy piece.
Nothing exemplifies this better than the theme introduced in the second, slow, movement, which is then repeated until the end of the piece, so full of delicate beauty and pain and at the same time extremely catchy. It stays with you.
Schubert manages that most supreme of feats, to be melancholy without being maudlin, his pain is not a mockery of pain but truly heartfelt, and he manages to pass that though with all of its complexities in his music. This is not Rachmaninoff's kitsch romanticism.
Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The Trio No. 2 in E-flat major for piano, violin, and violoncello, D. 929, was one of the last compositions completed by Franz Schubert, dated November 1827. It was published by Probst as opus 100 in late 1828, shortly before the composer's death. Unlike much of Schubert's late music, he actually heard this work performed before he died.
Scene from Barry Lyndon with the beautiful andante:
1 comment:
Hooray for Schubert, but why'd you have to knock Rachmaninoff? The man gets a bad rap. People feel and express their emotions differently in different times and cultures - just because Schubert is sincere doesn't mean Rachmaninoff isn't.
Keep it up - I enjoy reading these.
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