What are your favourite piano trios ?

[teamsaint]

I wish I hadn't looked at this thread. I am missing Ravel, Dvorak, Shostakovich & Beethoven except the Archduke let alone most of Mozart & Haydn. It would be good to know people's favourite recordings as well as their favourite trios. I have tended to focus on quartets so far.

I have discovered some gems , like the Faure, and lots to investigate like Ireland and Bridge....at least lots of this stuff can be accessed online free these days, ......

[Roehre]

For me:

Beethoven: "Ghost" trio op.70/1
and two trios which have a lot in common though I don't think Westermann knew Bridge's:
Bridge Pianotrio no.2 (1929)
Westermann Pianotrio op.18 (1944/45) (Westermann was the manager of the Berlin Phil and never a member of the Nazi-party)

[Alain Maréchal]

Favourite piano trios are Ravel and second Schubert, but somewhere I have a version of Verklaerte Nacht arranged for piano trio (I think by the composer), that I prefer to the strings-only version. I find the texture less astringent.

[ahinton]

Favourite piano trios are Ravel and second Schubert, but somewhere I have a version of Verklaerte Nacht arranged for piano trio (I think by the composer), that I prefer to the strings-only version. I find the texture less astringent.

The only piano trio arrangement of Verklärte Nacht of which I am aware is by the pianist Eduard Steuermann (1892-1964), with one of whose pupils I once studied; he was a pupil of Busoni and Humperdinck as well as Schönberg, played the piano part in the première of Pierrot Lunaire, was soloist in the first performance of Schönberg's Piano Concerto and taught pianist including Brendel, Gimpel and Lympany.

Sorabji gave a largely glowing review to a London recital that Steuermann gave in 1928 whose improbably exhausting programme comprised Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach and the Hammerklavier Sonata with Steuermann's own arrangement for piano of Schönberg's First Chamber Symphony in between.

Schönberg arranged that chamber symphony for full orchestra in 1923 at around the time that Webern arranged it for flute, clarinet and piano trio and he (Schönberg) made another full orchestral arrangement in 1935 but, although the Webern occasionally gets an outing, the composer's own two orchestral arrangements are far more rarely performed and the Steuermann seems almost to have disappeared off the radar altogether.

Like Steuermann's chamber symphony arrangement, his Verklärte Nacht for piano trio is as well-meaning as it is well-crafted, yet they each pale before the original; I have to admit that the composer's own far better known 1917 string orchestra version that he revised in 1943, fabulously skilled and persuasive though it is on its own terms, also compromises the sheer emotional intimacy of the original which, for me, remains the best way in which to listen to it, just as the composer's original version of the chamber symphony stands heard and shoulders above the others, interesting though they are.

[Bryn]

Feldman, Ives, AMM when it was Prevost, Rowe and Tilbury.

[Alain Maréchal]

The only piano trio arrangement of Verklärte Nacht of which I am aware is by the pianist Eduard Steuermann (1892-1964),

the Steuermann seems almost to have disappeared off the radar altogether.

compromises the sheer emotional intimacy of the original .

I'll take ahinton's word for it about the arranger - I can't lay hands on the CD, which is somewhere in my scattered collection.
I still like it as a piano trio - perhaps I prefer the lack of emotional intimacy.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Steuermann earns a passing mention in Harold C Schonberg's "The Great Pianists" (1963), but only as a representative of "Twentieth-Century Schools" (his final chapter), one such who has "specialized in the Viennese atonalists and decophanists".

perhaps one cannot qualify as a truly Great Pianist from so limited a repertoire?

Discuss on not more than two sides of the paper!

[ahinton]

Steuermann earns a passing mention in Harold C Schonberg's "The Great Pianists" (1963), but only as a representative of "Twentieth-Century Schools" (his final chapter), one such who has "specialized in the Viennese atonalists and decophanists".

perhaps one cannot qualify as a truly Great Pianist from so limited a repertoire?

Discuss on not more than two sides of the paper!

Less than one side of the only piece of paper that I can find right now is what I shall write on to the effect that, in his mid-career, Steuermann was most noted for his performances of Beethoven sonatas...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Steuermann earns a passing mention in Harold C Schonberg's "The Great Pianists" (1963), but only as a representative of "Twentieth-Century Schools" (his final chapter), one such who has "specialized in the Viennese atonalists and decophanists".

perhaps one cannot qualify as a truly Great Pianist from so limited a repertoire?

Discuss on not more than two sides of the paper!

Extremely limited: are "decophanists" composers who use ten-note rows or enthusiasts of Streamline Moderne?

[DublinJimbo]

Schubert Trio No. 2 D.929
Mendelssohn Trio No. 2 op. 66
Haydn 'Gypsy' Trio

[LeMartinPecheur]

Extremely limited: are "decophanists" composers who use ten-note rows or enthusiasts of Streamline Moderne?

<DOH>decaphonists

[ahinton]

Do, do, do what you've done, done done before, Arnie...

Actually, it's all about coffee. Those who do decaf are phoney. But then lots of things in music are about coffee. There's Bach's Coffee Cantata and there's the Brown / de Silva song You're the cream in my coffee - and then there's that remarkable work by the now 97-year-old Dutilleux...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

and then there's that remarkable work by the now 97-year-old Dutilleux...

Mystère de l'Instant? - There's a very good recording, I believe, by the Skinny Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

[ahinton]

Mystère de l'Instant? - There's a very good recording, I believe, by the Skinny Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Got it in one!

[Nick Armstrong]

Mystère de l'Instant? - There's a very good recording, I believe, by the Skinny Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Started my afternoon with a smile, ferns! Ta