ENGLISH PIANO TRIOS / Trio Anima Mundi / Review

ENGLISH PIANO TRIOS

Trio Anima Mundi

Divine Art 25158 / TT: 77’35”

 

Ever since Haydn dreamt about the idea of partnering a keyboard with violin and cello, the genre of the piano trio really took off. Like the string quartet (which Haydn also pioneered), the piano trio became a vehicle of musical expression that helped define the history and performance of chamber music. However, how many piano trios does one actually get to hear regularly in concert?

 

Perhaps not more than two dozen, including the likes by Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Ravel and Shostakovich, to name the usual suspects. This is where Australia’s Trio Anima Mundi fills in the gaping lacunae. Established in 2008, its ongoing project of Piano Trio Archaeology aims to revive a rich legacy of piano trios lost to time and posterity, by performing neglected and forgotten works. Its second album is wholly dedicated to five late Romantic English composers, whose waning fortunes have been mostly undeserved. 

Of these names, only Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (composer of the once popular cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast) and Rutland Boughton (of The Immortal Hour fame) are perhaps familiar, albeit at the fringes of one’s memory. Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), of mixed English and African parentage, did use African themes in his music, but his 9-minute-long Trio in E minor was not one of these. Its idiom is closer to Brahms and Dvorak, the finale being a vigorous Allegro con furiant, although shorter than most of the Hungarian or Slavonic Dances.  

 

Boughton (1878-1960) was well-known for the exploration and incorporation of Celtic themes in his music. His Celtic Prelude: The Land of Heart’s Desire packs in modal melodies in its compact seven minutes which end with somewhat of an anti-climax. More satisfying is the Folk Song Fantasy by James Cliffe Forrester (1869-1940), the winning piano trio entry at the 1917 Corbett Competition, which had the stipulation of a phantasie based on local folksongs from the composer’s home county. Its totally engaging 13 minutes are time well spent.

 

The Piano Trio No.1 in G major (composed 1889) by Rosalind Ellicott (1857-1924), at 29 minutes, is the most substantial work in this collection. It is also the most conservative, its pleasing melodies and dance-like rhythms being no more modern than her contemporary Edward Elgar at his pastoral best. The slow movement Adagio has lyrical Schumannesque moments to die for.

 

The Trio in A minor Op.22 (1921) by Harry Waldo Warner (1874-1945) is the most modern sounding work in the album. Winner of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Prize, it is also the most satisfying; combining Romantic, fantasy and modal/pentatonic elements in an edgy, coherent and never random manner. It will actually make a good companion to the Ravel piano trio (in the same key) for any recital or disc.

 

This is a very enjoyable and well-filled disc of virtually unknown music, performed with passion and conviction by the Trio Anima Mundi, ensemble-in-residence of the International Academy of Musical Arts in Melbourne, Victoria. The recorded sound is realistic and of demonstration quality, a hallmark of Divine Art recordings.