MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW
Plain text for smartphones
and printers


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

 

Support us financially by purchasing this disc from:

Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Piano Trio No.1 in B major Op.8 (1854 rev 1889) [37:04]
Bedřich SMETANA (1824-1884)
Piano Trio in G minor Op.15 (1855) [28:32]
Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio
rec. January 2010, American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY
BRIDGE 9362 [65:45]

Experience Classicsonline



This is certainly not a unique coupling. The Trio Bamberg, for example, recorded the same two trios on Thorofon Classics CTH 2447, though it’s not a disc I’ve heard. One of the interesting conjunctions is that the two chamber works were written a year apart, Brahms’s in 1854 when he was just twenty-one, though he was to revise it in 1889, and Smetana’s in 1855 in the immediate aftermath of his young daughter’s death. There is therefore a chronological logic in thus coupling them, even though they do occupy rather different aesthetic and expressive positions. However, I tend to welcome this kind of coupling, given that, in Czech terms, Brahms always gets coupled with the younger Dvořák.
 
The Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio is Mark Kaplan (violin), Clancy Newman (cello) and Yael Weiss (piano). Kaplan is by some way the most experienced and has long been a notable chamber player. There is much that is fine, instrumentally, collectively and tonally but they play unevenly. True, they play the Brahms’ first movement exposition repeat, which is welcome, but they can be rather foursquare, and the general tenor of their approach in this opening movement, at least, is rather portly for so essentially youthful a work. As a result the music tends toward sectionality, occasional lumpy phrasing, and lacks the urgency and sweep it needs. The scherzo, and certainly the slow movement, taken at a rapt tempo, work considerably better.
 
Smetana’s Trio is curiously argued. At points they sound more bad-tempered than anguished, and at other points they sound positively non-committal. Understatement is certainly no vice, but soliloquies lack passion, the vital rhythms in the second movement are rather undercooked, and transitions in the finale are awkward. I don’t know how long they’ve lived with this work, but it doesn’t seem to be really under their fingers expressively. It’s a sobering experience listening to the Suk Trio’s performances of both this trio and the Brahms alongside these ones. In the Smetana, the Suk is passionate, biting, intense, personalised, eloquent and rhythmically knowing. In the Brahms they are urgent and sweeping, tonally congruent, and always keep the music alive.
 
Despite some virtues, I would look elsewhere for these trios.
 
Jonathan Woolf  

Support us financially by purchasing this disc from:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Error processing SSI file



Error processing SSI file