Weinberg • Lera Auerbach • Dvořák

Weinberg: Piano Trio, Op. 24; Lera Auerbach: Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 28; Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 4,

Op. 90 ‘Dumky’

Trio Zimbalist

Curtis Studio (digital only) 69:34 mins The Weinberg bandwagon shows no sign of slowing down. No sooner had I waxed lyrical about the Trio con Brio Copenhagen’s superb release of the Piano Trio (reviewed, March 2024), than another recording of the work comes into serious contention. This one features the Trio Zimbalist, whose members are star alumni from the Curtis Institute of Music, and boasts closely-miked yet extremely clear sound.

On paper, the Trio Zimbalist’s programme, coupling this tortuous war-scarred work and Auerbach’s equally desolate First Piano Trio with Dvořák’s less febrile ‘Dumky’ Trio, seems not quite as emotionally convincing as that of the Trio con Brio Copenhagen who pair it with haunting Schubert. Yet the

Trio Zimbalist’s performance of the Dvořák suggests otherwise. Indeed, by placing greater emphasis on the music’s more reflective and melancholic aspects, and by giving us less naïve liveliness in the more animated sections, these performers invoke a much darker subtext to Dvořák’s music than I had previously imagined. This approach works extremely well in context of the whole programme, but if you would prefer to listen to the Dvořák on its own, other fine recordings offer more nuance.

Similar issues inflect their performance of the Weinberg. On the one hand, the Trio Zimbalist are no less intense than their rivals in projecting the music’s frenzied passage work in the opening movement, Toccata and sections of the Finale. But they don’t quite achieve the same spooky, disembodied sound in the work’s more introvert sections as the Trio con Brio, whose outstanding reading of the closing fragile waltz makes a devastatingly powerful impact. Erik Levi

PERFORMANCE

RECORDING