Schubert: Complete Piano Trios

Advantages: Haunting, passionate music to get lost in.
Disadvantages: It's classical and this puts people off before they even try it.

.... The sombre andante sostenutu interlude recalls the adagio and must have provoked a few tears itself over the years. I can only quote the notes which describes it as “tortured innocence painfully suggests the composer’s increasing awareness of his own mortality (he died just over two weeks after completing the quintet).” Woken by the raucous scherzo the heart begins to pound. Allegretto [9’41] Schubert finally worked though the anger and frustration and the fourth movement has a more relaxed happy feel. The dance music reminiscent of gypsy violins plays quite cheerfully and by the end of the quintet one feels truly satisfied in some way and ready for anything in spite of the strange ending. String Trio Movement in B Flat Major, D471 [11’50] This short piece by Schubert, placed first on the cd, is much lighter and brighter than... Read review

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Advantages: Music to take you beyond this world
Disadvantages: Needs a bit of patience

...Patient if it helps) was written for a harpsichord player called Goldberg to play to his employer, a minor nobleman who suffered from insomnia. You or I might nowadays turn on the radio to help us to sleep; the nobleman sent for Goldberg. Chamber music is just music for a small number of instruments – anything from one to ten or so. The work I want to convince you is worth your while this time is the String Quintet by Schubert. Right – let me guess: your eyes have glazed over and you’re wondering why you even read this far! It’s the label thing again: if I’d called it Franz Meets His Maker you might have been slightly less put off. Just bear with me, OK? ******Franz Schubert…****** Poor Schubert lived a short life: born 1797, snuffed out in 1828 by syphilis, which dominated the last four years of his life. Yet in his thirty... Read review

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Advantages: Two outstanding peices of chamber music for an unusual combination of instruments
Disadvantages: On the surface quite contrasting works, listener must be openminded

...The work of Ligeti has been at the forefront of Western avant-garde since his escape from the oppressive communist regime of Hungary in 1956, and he is widely appreciated as one of the most outstanding contemporary composers. The Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano because it was born out of a three-year period of illness and writer's block after the completion of Le Grand Macabre in which time he laboured over a piano concerto but completed only two short harpsichord pieces (Continuum and Hungarian Rock), yet the result in 1982 was the Trio, one of the finest and most complex pieces written so far. His career up to this point had included such sucesses as his Requiem, Atmosphères and the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film 2001. Tiring of his own cluster-textural techniques and the avant-garde, Ligeti refreshed his compositional... Read review

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