Beethoven & Schumann Trios Trio les Esprits

• 1 I. Poco sostenuto - Allegro ma non troppo 11:18
• 2 II. Allegretto 05:21
• 3 III. Allegretto ma non troppo 07:16
• 4 IV. Finale. Presto 08:12
• 5 I. Bewegt, doch nicht zu rasch 09:44
• 6 II. Ziemlich langsam 06:50
• 7 III. Rasch 04:03
• 8 IV. Kräftig, mit humor 07:11
• Total Runtime 59:55

Info for Beethoven & Schumann Trios

Throughout a history that stretches from Haydn to Georges Aperghis by way of Schubert, Brahms, Ravel, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff, the piano trio has been a genre less highly esteemed than the string quartet, yet its art is no less subtle and delicate; a genre that attempts to create fragile balances in the seemingly impossible union of three dissimilar voices. Many wonderful musicians – the Beaux Arts Trio and the Trio Wanderer, to name just two ensembles – have devoted whole careers to this refined genre. While rarely used to proclaim an artistic manifesto or a theoretical advance, the trio nevertheless remains an important milestone in a composer’s life. Ravel finished his as the Great War began; Shostakovich’s Trio no.2 evokes the horrors and persecutions of the Second World War; Schubert lavished great care on his two trios during a period of illness; Rachmaninoff composed his Trio élégiaque no.2 after learning of the death of Tchaikovsky. More recently, Olivier Greif subtitled his only trio De Profundis because it was composed in a state of utter despair. Often linked with its creator’s intimate thoughts or everyday circumstances, the trio genre occupies a privileged position between the concerto and the sonata, and never leaves composers indifferent. Beethoven may perhaps have been in love with Countess Marie Erdödy, to whom he dedicated the Trios op.70. Although the two friends subsequently quarrelled, the composer did not change the inscription (as he had in the case of his Eroica Symphony). Written at the same period as the Pastoral Symphony, the second trio of the op.70 set is one of Beethoven’s most touching chamber works. Here the composer deploys a subtle artistry, avoiding violent contrasts. He places the only truly slow music at the start of the work, and sets off in search of a new sound world: we hear waltzes that move into mysterious, luminous harmonic regions. The delicate variations of the second movement are marked piano dolce; the third movement ends strangely, as if on tiptoe, while the finale seeks new timbres. Its thematic material consists of bursts of repeated notes, like timpani strokes; the motifs are brief and incisive.

The virtuosity of this trio is never demonstrative: its prevailing mood is calm, tension-free, contrasted yet never strenuously so. The forty-eight-year-old Beethoven refuses all routine, speaking a free, unconstrained language, but its very freedom is the fruit of his willpower, whereas Schumann’s freedom aims to be wholly instinctive. Schumann never renounced the Master – on the contrary, he built connections, bridges, passageways between Beethoven’s output and his own. ‘But nowadays, of course, to attract attention, indeed simply to please, one must be more than merely honest. Or did Beethoven live in vain?’, he wrote in 1841 in memory of his mentor. Though Beethoven’s influence was even stronger on Schumann’s imagination than on his compositional technique, one encounters many borrowings, many allusions: to Fidelio/ Leonore, to An die ferne Geliebte (in the Fantasie op.17), and so forth. What Schumann prizes in Beethoven is his sense of form, from the elliptical Bagatelles to the mighty symphonies; he recalls the popular tone the older man sometimes used in his chamber music; and of course he shares his frustrated love for the ‘distant beloved’. Schumann’s last trio, dedicated to the Danish composer Niels Gade, is a mysterious work. It is situated in the composer’s career after the 138 lieder he wrote in 1840, after the three string quartets (1842), after the tightly woven Second Symphony in C major (1845/46), after the other two trios (1847). Yet this trio published in 1852 as his op.110 has nothing of a work of ‘synthesis’ or perfect mastery. On the contrary, Schumann seeks new paths and rejects perfect equilibrium, producing a dense composition in which each instrumental voice gains its independence. Nothing is clear-cut, nothing is presented in straightforward fashion. The first movement is marked Bewegt, doch nicht zu rasch (Lively, but not too fast); the second is more like a duo for violin and cello than a trio. Driven by a dreamy, melancholy impulse, Schumann avoids flights of virtuosity, breaks free of symmetrical phrases, to offer a tight, densely organised, concentrated thematic texture. The dialogue is continuous. The composer Wolfgang Rihm recently observed: ‘This final trio in G minor possesses an emancipated language that articulates music in terms of situation and circumstances, and is not presented as the outcome of a process of transformation of themes and motifs. There are indeed plenty of themes and motifs, but there is also an “open field” or current in which they appear and disappear; there are no points of reference, and the music is self-generating, most strikingly perhaps in the slow movement, where it is difficult to make out a focal point; everything streams, flows, and then finally comes to rest.’ With this trio, Schumann thinks through a fundamental problem: how to find the appropriate degree of conciliation between the ‘poetics of the fragment’ and an expansive, articulate structure? His instinct gives him a possible answer, just as Beethoven’s absolute control shed a different light on the issue. With their respective trios, these two composers seek a unique texture, more impalpable than material, more poetic than theoretical. It is with these two ineffable works that the youthful Trio Les Esprits makes its recording debut. Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier, Translation: Charles Johnston

Trio les Esprits:
Adam Laloum, piano
Yang Mi-sa, violin
Victor Julien-Laferrière, cello

Trio les Esprits
From their very first meeting, it is a true friendship that develops between pianist Adam Laloum, violinist Yang Mi-sa and cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière.

This complicity was confirmed during their first concert in February 2009. They decided in 2012 to form the Trio les Esprits.

The three artists met at the Paris Conservatory and studied in the chamber music class of Vladimir Mendelssohn and the master class of Hatto Bayerle (ex-Berg Quartet).

They have since then the opportunity to play many concerts, including festivals such as Cordes-sur-Ciel, the Deauville Festival, the Conservatory of Dramatic Art of Paris, Zermatt, at the Museum of Romantic Life, the Invalides, the Festival of Epau at Festival Pianissimes, etc.

Among the upcoming concerts, we can note Parisian debuts at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, concerts at the Folle Journee de Nantes, Soirées Musicales de Tours, the Deauville Easter Festival, Music Festival d’Entrecasteaux, etc..

The trio will perform chamber music with partners such as violist Adrien Lamarca, clarinetist Raphael Severe…

Trio les Esprits is in residence at the Polignac Foundation since July 2012.

Booklet for Beethoven & Schumann Trios