Camille Saint-Saëns - Piano Trios (Florestan Trio)

Information

Composer: Camille Saint-Saëns

1. Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18: 1. Allegro vivace
2. Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18: 2. Andante
3. Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18: 3. Scherzo. Presto
4. Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18: 4. Allegro
5. Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92: 1. Allegro ma non troppo
6. Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92: 2. Allegretto
7. Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92: 3. Andante con moto
8. Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92: 4. Grazioso, poco allegro
9. Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92: 5. Allegro

Florestan Trio
Anthony Marwood, violin
Richard Leste, cello
Susan Tomes, piano

Date: 2004
Label: Hyperion
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67538

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Review

Well, the Florestan Trio have done it again – if this disc doesn’t at least win a Gramophone Award nomination, I’ll eat my hat. Indeed, such is the cumulative emotional impact of these performances that, I don’t mind admitting, I wept during the wonderful fortissimo climax of the E minor trio’s first movement – that even before the astonishing intensity of the final, precipitous Allegro.

I say cumulative because most of the time the Florestan prefer stealth and suggestion; they don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves – unlike the equally brilliant but more high-octane accounts by Trio Wanderer (Harmonia Mundi, 10/05). That’s not to say that the Florestan lack thrills or the Wanderer refinement. With this new recording all is, like Saint-Saëns’s art, a filigree lightness and clarity that somehow twists itself into an ever-deepening pattern of turmoil.

Listen to the underlying wistfulness in the F major Trio: how the élan of the first movement’s final chords provides a springboard into a cheerful bucolic landscape that is nevertheless crossed with clouds – this brought about by a web of delicate rhythmic and tonal shading in the string-playing stretched over Susan Tomes’s dancing, pellucid framework.

Or the maturity and self-confidence in the E minor: nothing is forced, everything flows – from the stormy first movement through the lighter central movements (and here the languid descending phrases of the Andante con moto are beautifully sculpted by both Marwood and Lester) to the complex yet never turgid imitative writing of the last. Recorded sound and accompanying notes are, of course, impeccable. No argument: just buy it.

-- William Yeoman, Gramophone

More reviews:

ClassicsToday ARTISTIC: 10 / SOUND: 10

MusicWeb International RECORDING OF THE MONTH

http://www.classical-music.com/review/saint-sa%E2%80%98ns-23

http://www.allmusic.com/album/saint-sa%C3%ABns-piano-trios-mw0001557980

http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Sa%C3%ABns-Piano-Trios-Florestan-Trio/dp/B000ENC6PU

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Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era. His best-known works include his concertos for violin, piano and cello, his 3rd symphony, Danse macabre and The Carnival of the Animals. Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, making his concert debut at the age of ten. He held only one teaching post for less than five years. His students included Gabriel Fauré.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Saint-Sa%C3%ABns

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The Florestan Trio was formed in 1995 in London. That year the piano quartet Domus disbanded, and that group's pianist Susan Tomes and its cellist Richard Lester, together with violinist Anthony Marwood, formed the Florestan Trio. The Trio has established a reputation as one of the finest piano trios in the world. In its first decade, the group has made 14 recordings on the Hyperion label, all of which received Gramophone nominations.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/florestan-trio-mn0001398686

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