Mozart - Piano Trios
The Florestan Trio
The prolific Florestan here offer three trios, including the two finest, K502 and K542. These are beautifully judged performances, generally fleeter of foot, airier of texture and more intimate...
Mozart - Piano Trios
The Florestan Trio
Purchase product
The prolific Florestan here offer three trios, including the two finest, K502 and K542. These are beautifully judged performances, generally fleeter of foot, airier of texture and more intimate...
About
The piano trio had thrived as a genre suited to amateur music-making in eighteenth-century parlours, but it was only when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned his hand to the medium that it was transformed into the art form we know today. Emerging from the home into the concert hall, piano parts became significantly taxing (Mozart wrote them for himself to play) and the violin and cello were elevated from accompanying roles to positions of equal prominence. The three trios on this disc were written at the zenith of Mozarts powers, K502 in 1786, K542 and K564 in the second half of 1788. All three are masterpieces, a sense of profound musical thought ever-present beneath their tranquil exteriors. Performances by The Florestan Trio are every bit as committed and polished as we have come to expect from their many previous acclaimed recordings.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
2010
The prolific Florestan here offer three trios, including the two finest, K502 and K542. These are beautifully judged performances, generally fleeter of foot, airier of texture and more intimate in tone than those from Barenboim and colleagues on EMI (see below), with an ideal balance between the instruments (Richard Lester's cello always a telling presence, even when his role is apparently incidental). In K542 the Florestan catch the peculiar Mozartian mix of radiance and passion in the outer movements without any of the excessive lingerings of the EMI performance.
The fast movements of the other two trios – the brilliant, concerto-like K502 and the ingenuous K564 – are just as delightful in their verve, their gleeful, quick-witted repartee and the vitality with which the players invest even routine- looking accompanying figuration. Occasionally, as in the finale of K564, Barenboim and Co are just that much more vivid. But far preferable is the Florestan's flowing tempo and naturally expressive phrasing in K502's Larghetto.
For those wanting K502 and K542 on a single disc, the Florestan enchant with their ebullience and spontaneous delight, and find a winning tenderness in the first movement of K542 and choose a sprightly, lilting tempo in same trio's Andante grazioso.
