Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Trio in A minor (1914)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, op. 92 (1892)
Sitkovetsky Trio
rec. 2019, St George’s, Bristol, UK
Reviewed as 16-bit lossless download
BIS BIS2219 SACD [61]
This recording, which has just won the BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Award, was released in the middle of last year, and somehow was not reviewed on this site. How could this have happened? In the spirit of better late than never, I am addressing that deficiency.
This is the fourth release by the Sitkovetsky Trio on BIS: the first – an all-Czech disc was recorded in 2013 (review), which impressed me considerably. It was followed by the two Mendelssohn trios that I reviewed in 2015, and found absolutely dazzling. We then have quite a gap before the next, due presumably to a change in personnel, with founding cellist Leonard Elschenbroich leaving, replaced in 2019 by Isang Enders. The next release – a pair of Beethovens – was warmly received by my colleague Philip Buttall (review). Now they have turned their attention to France.
Ravel’s single trio is one of the towering masterpieces of the genre. Anyone who loves the work will already have their rusted-on favourite version, making it very hard for a new interpretation to make an impact. Thus far in their career, the Sitkovetskys have only recorded mainstream works by major composers, so clearly they are not afraid of such a challenge. My favourite has evolved over the years: the first version I knew was the 1980s Beaux Arts on Philips, but that was replaced by the Florestan Trio’s much-lauded version. However, it too has been supplanted at the top of the order by the Wanderer Trio (Harmonia Mundi), who give a more emotionally engaging performance, and dare I say it, a very French feel. So how would the British/Chinese/German-Korean Sitkovetskys fare against this opposition? I knew from the Mendelssohn disc that it wouldn’t be a straightforward experience.
And indeed, that was what transpired: a performance that is at times exhilarating, disturbing, melancholic and beautiful, but never routine. I don’t intend to go through each movement in detail. Suffice to provide some examples of their excellence, one from each movement. The achingly beautiful opening to the first movement has an air of uncertainty and yearning which is very involving, achieved, I think, by very subtle variations in dynamics in individual notes. There is nothing extreme about the tempo here, nor indeed elsewhere; the magic is achieved in other ways. This seems to be a characteristic of the Sitkovetskys, which I first observed in the Mendelssohn trios. In the Pantoum scherzo, there is an edgy brittleness that makes for uncomfortable listening, but also seems very right. The Passacaille is surely one of the most emotionally draining movements in all chamber music, and requires such control over tempo and dynamics. I will pick out cellist Isang Enders here, though it could equally have been either of the others: his playing at the end of the movement as it collapses in on itself is extraordinary. In the closing pages of the work, there is an anger, bordering on violence, far more so than any other version I have heard; in some, it sounds almost triumphant. The booklet notes make the point about the times in which it was written – August 1914 – and that it hints at a cry of anguish against the horrors that the world was plunging into. Clearly this is a view shared by the Sitkovetsky Trio.
The Saint-Saëns E minor trio is a work of his maturity, and it is of sufficient stature not to be swamped by the Ravel, but it is asking a lot to place it second on the disc. I would have been inclined to reverse the order. Some might see pairing Saint-Saëns with Ravel as somewhat odd, but this is not the first time it has happened (review). Despite the obvious differences in their music, Ravel is known to have admired Saint-Saëns greatly, saying of him “Believe me, this man knew how to compose”. It was the older composer’s first trio that Ravel turned to for ideas in how to deal with the problems of writing for piano and the two string instruments.
Saint-Saëns tends to be regarded as somewhat of a conservative, but this trio is quite unusually constructed: five movements with no true slow movement or scherzo. The first movement, a nervous Allegro non troppo, is the longest at over ten minutes, but that time rushes by. You are impelled through it by the insistent rhythms, especially in the piano - Wu Qian is quite exceptional here. I don’t think I’m being unfair in saying that the quality of that first movement isn’t maintained all the way through the remaining four. Of the three shortish middle movements, the second could be seen as scherzo-esque, and is the weakest of the five. The third movement Andante con moto has a yearning quality, while the fourth is a sad but graceful waltz. The final movement is quite unusual – it is based around a fugue but manages to sound quite unstructured. The Sitkovetskys are very good, but the Florestan Trio’s gentler, less edgy version just shades them (review). The intensity that is a Sitkovetsky characteristic, and that served the Ravel so well, doesn’t suit Saint-Saëns quite as much. In the fourth movement, for example, the Florestans give the waltz a delightfully wry humour which is absent in the Sitkovetsky version. Still, if theirs was your only version of the work, you wouldn’t be short-changed.
With BIS, you know what to expect with production values – it almost seems like stating the obvious to indicate that the sound was beautifully natural. While this is a SACD in physical form and available as a 24-bit download, I listened in standard 16-bit stereo.
Everything about this release speaks of quality: the playing, the interpretations, the recording, the booklet notes. I did make a comment in the review of the other disc that pairs these works that it would have been good to have filled the disc a little more – certainly there are some French trios of the late nineteenth century, d’Indy for example, that would have fitted. Or am I just being greedy? Bohemia, Germany, France … I wonder where the Sitkovetskys will take us next.
David Barker
