Complete Piano Trios Vol. 1

It's rare that one gets to experience a true tour de force, but that is what I've enjoyed the past several months with the Van Baerle Trio's traversal of Beethoven's complete works for piano trio—a marvellous journey through some of the greatest music ever written. (...) What I can say is that, overall, these are freshly vigorous performances. I love them for their clarity, intelligence, precise ensemble, and joie de vivre. They are not played as historically informed performances (HIP), but the performances certainly have been informed by the HIP movement in their lightness, their direct statement, their lack of over-indulgence. These are largely quick, lithe performances but with a great delicacy of touch. They don't dawdle, but they linger where the music benefits from attention to that space and quiet between the notes that so greatly adds meaning in the right hands. And these are the right hands, indeed.

There is plenty of wit and grace in these pieces, and you can hear these three musicians delighting in every moment. Beethoven’s virtuoso piano writing suits Minnaar’s digital dexterity to the ground, and even in the Presto finale of Op. 1 No. 1 there is no glossing over the musical shapes in all of those runs and scales. Op. 1 No. 3 with its minor-key gravitas gives a more substantial impression than No. 1, but the smiles and sideways glances are still present not far beneath the serious work, and the surprises in the finale come up sounding truly new and fresh. The Piano Trio Op. 11 with its reference to a comic opera by Joseph Wiegl in its third movement is superb, and in my view the Van Baerle Trio never puts a foot wrong in any of these works, pacing both fast and slow allowing the music to develop and breathe with a sense of balance and ease as well as with drama and excitement, all aided by a fabulous DSD recorded sound that puts us up close and personal with the musicians.