Piano Trio in G major Op 1 No 2 - Beethoven
Trio sur des melodies populaires Irlandaises - Martin
Elegy Op 23 - Suk
Trio in C Major Op 87 - Brahms
For some reason the combination of piano, violin and cello is the hardest of all standard combinations to balance. One string instrument and piano automatically settle into the roles of soloist and accompanist, while more than two strings can hold their own against a piano.
Benjamin Frith's playing in the early Beethoven trio was fine in itself - delicate and sparkling - and he was never actually playing too loudly for the other instruments to be heard, but the tone and resonance of the piano were just too overbearing. The piano lid should at least have been lowered.
If the same problems were not quite so evident in the Brahms, it may have been because violinist Lucy Gould and cellist Martin Storey seized the opportunity to relish Brahms's broadly singing melodies. This could have been first-rate trio playing, and at times it was.
The Swiss composer Frank Martin's 1925 Trio showed that it is possible to combine European Impressionist harmonies with Irish melodies (albeit, one suspects, synthesised Irish melodies). For me, however, the real find of the evening was the 1899 Elegy by Josef Suk.
Inspired by the death of a friend, this short piece has the fine tunes and ravishing, doom-laden harmonies of his famous Asrael Symphony. It is surely time for Suk to come out from under the shadow of his father-in-law, Dvorak.
