Brahms • Bruch • Schubert

Brahms: Trio in E flat, Op. 40; Bruch: Eight Pieces, Op. 83; Schubert: Nocturne in E flat, D897 Natalia Lomeiko (violin), Yuri Zhislin (viola), Ivan Martin (piano)

Orchid Classics ORC100098 75:42 mins Each of these works exists in formats that are more familiar: Brahms’s E flat Horn Trio featuring the natural, valveless Waldhorn¸ Bruch’s Eight Pieces with clarinet and viola, and Schubert’s Notturno for standard piano trio format (with cello). All three arrangements here, though not specifically authorised by the composers themselves, nonetheless work well for the unusual line-up of violin, viola and piano. And a stellar level of performance makes an engaging case for them.

The opening horn phrase of Brahms’s Trio, though delivered with likeable warmth by Yuri Zhislin’s viola, can’t help coming across as a strange moment. But the string-duo sonority becomes easy to adjust to: the Adagio mesto slow movement’s lament (mourning the death of Brahms’s mother) develops an almost Janá ek-like colouring and poignancy, and Ivan Martin’s speedy keyboard fingerwork in the finale shows how Brahms’s fast movements of this kind can deftly avoid becoming an uneasy tussle between virtuosity and turgidity.

Bruch’s Eight Pieces, a product of his neglected and povertystricken old age, amount to a sizeable 40-minute cycle whose range of ideas would grace any chamber music recital; the music often favours the two stringed instruments in alternating solo writing rather than playing together, a device that gives Natalia Lomeiko’s beautiful violin-playing repeated opportunities to shine. Schubert’s gorgeous Notturno, too, transfers happily to this alternative format. Malcolm Hayes

PERFORMANCE ★★★★★

RECORDING ★★★★