Mendelssohn: Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Mendelssohn
Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times: "The three superb musicians on this new recording, all in their 20's, face the hefty competition easily by playing with an irresistible spontaneity best heard in the scherzos, where — even in the more troubled C minor Trio (Op. 66) — they momentarily evoke the trim sprightliness of a much younger Mendelssohn. They approach these works as interior high dramas, contests between melancholy and ecstasy. And … they also play with an unassailable precision. Nor does this ensemble lack elegance. Julia Fischer's violin lines, though hard-driven in the outer movements, also convey warmth and shapeliness in the music's quietly intense passages: the almost prayerful slow movements, for example, or parts of the C minor Trio's finale. Daniel Müller-Schott's cello playing matches those extremes and adds an engaging lugubriousness when Mendelssohn seems to invite it, as in the opening bars of the D minor Trio. And Jonathan Gilad's piano, woven beautifully into the texture, has a bright sparkle of a sort that other recordings of these works don't quite match" ("Classical CD Reviews," 7/23/06).