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Martinu - Complete Piano Trios | Supraphon SU41972

Martinu - Complete Piano Trios

£15.02

In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day

Label: Supraphon

Cat No: SU41972

Barcode: 0099925419721

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Chamber

Release Date: 18th March 2016

Contents

About

The complete set of Bohuslav Martinů’s Piano Trios affords a fascinating insight into the constant transformations of his musical idiom from the early 1930s to the 1950s, also giving testimony to the composer as a human and his particular mindset.

The first, five-movement Trio, Cinq pièces brèves (1930) was written in a carefree manner (within a mere ten days) and intuitively. It is the very first Martinů piece to reflect his penchant for Neo-Baroque music, so salient a trait of his later creations. The second trio, Bergerettes, comes across as surprisingly light-hearted, given the time of its coming into being – in February 1939, a month prior to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and half a year before the outbreak of World War II... The last two piano trios, composed in the 1950s, bear all the features of Martinů’s mature musical phraseology. Trio no.2, completed in 1950, ranks among the apices of Martinů’s Neo-Classicist period, while the structurally more complex Trio no.3 (also known as the “Grand Trio”) has a concertante nature.

The recording of the complete Martinů Trios was made by the renowned Smetana Trio, who masterfully render all the colour shades, from airiness to the broad lyrical cantilena typical of Martinů’s late works.

The first new Supraphon album of the complete Martinů piano trios in more than 30 years ...

Smetana Trio:
- Jitka Čechová (piano)
- Jiří Vodička (violin)
- Jan Páleníček (cello)

Recorded at the Martínek Studio, Prague, between May 2015 and January 2016

Reviews

The virtuoso demands of this hugely attractive music are meat and drink to these wonderful Czech musicians … Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a better way to get to know this exhilarating and fresh music than from the hands, heads and hearts of the Smetanas.  Hugh Canning (Album of the Week)
The Sunday Times 3 April 2016
…it's already obvious that the music for piano trio performed here by the Smetana Trio is going straight on the shortlist for 2016. Martinu's chamber music reveals originality at every turn; there's so much of it, but each new discovery — sonata, duo, trio, quartet, serenade — seems to unveil a gem….It's hard to imagine more ardent champions for this visceral, unpredictable music. And clear, warm sound is exactly what we've come to expect from the Supraphon label over the years.  David Nice (Recording of the Month)
BBC Music Magazine June 2016

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