Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; Modest Mussorgsky - Piano Trio; Pictures at an Exhibition (Bekova Sisters)

Information

Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; Modest Mussorgsky

• (01-04) Rimsky-Korsakov - Piano Trio in C minor
• (05-19) Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Bekova Sisters)

The Bekova Sisters
Elvira Bekova, violin
Alfia Bekova, cello
Eleonora Bekova, piano

Date: 1999
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209672

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Review

The Bekovas' arrangement of [Picture] Pictures has some deft touches, and they do full justice to Rimsky's Trio

Mussorgsky's Pictures has not lacked orchestrators (I think there are now some 20 versions, but I await correction) ; this piano trio arrangement seems to be a first. It often works surprisingly well. 'Gnomus' is spookily laid out with plenty of string tremolo and sul ponticello; there is what sounds like some eerie col legno bowing in 'The Old Castle'; and 'Tuileries' speeds along with lightly dancing string figuration around the piano. Here, though, I felt the Bekovas missed a trick by not giving the final rush up from the bass, ending on a high note, to cello handing over to violin. However, there have been enough hands laid on the work without reviewers adding theirs. One of the most touching pieces is the double portrait of the two Jews, one rich, one poor (they were separate pictures in the exhibition, and the painter gave them to Mussorgsky). I have always disliked the snivelling muted trumpet in Ravel's orchestration. Here, much of the music is given to the violin, tenderly played.

Rimsky-Korsakov's Trio is a very different matter. In My Musical Life (Faber: 1989), he dismisses it, together with his G major String Quartet, as proving that chamber music was not his field. He abandoned it unfinished, and it was completed years later by his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg. Yet only in the lengthy finale does he seem to lose his way in musical manipulation; the equally long opening Allegro sustains its reflective mood well, and there is a graceful Allegro and an Adagio of much elegiac eloquence. It is an attractive and interesting piece, and the Bekova Sisters respond with especial sensitivity to the beautiful instrumental writing which had, of course, long been Rimsky-Korsakov's second nature.

-- John Warrack, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 8 / SOUND QUALITY: 9
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / SOUND: ****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/mar00/trio.htm

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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March [O.S. 6 March] 1844 – 21 June [O.S. 8 June] 1908) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was considered a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas. Rimsky-Korsakov shaped a generation of younger composers and musicians during his decades as an educator, and is considered "the main architect" of what the classical music public considers the Russian style of composition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Rimsky-Korsakov

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Modest Mussorgsky (21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as The Five. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period, striving to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers, but some of the original scores are now also available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky

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The Bekova Sisters – Elvira, violin; Eleonora, piano; Alfia, cello – were born in Kazakhstan and studied at the Moscow Conservatory. After their much-publicised reunion in the West and sensational debut in 1989 on the South Bank, London, the Sisters have rapidly established themselves on the international music scene. They have performed in major festivals in Great Britain and Europe and record exclusively for Chandos. Their recordings include piano trios by Rachmaninov, Brahms, Ravel, Martinu, Grechaninov, Schubert and Shostakovich, and sonatas for cello and piano by Brahms.

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