Ghostly Beethoven: The Sitkovetsky Trio on BIS
Here on Classical Explorer, we met the Sitkovetsky Trio (Alexander Sitkovetsky, violin; Isang Enders, cello; Wu Qian, piano) before in works by Ravel and Saint-Saëns.
This is volume three of their ongoing Beethoven piano trios series on BIS, and features the so-called “Ghost” Trio (Op. 70/1) and the very first of teh cycle, Op. 1/1, plus a short piece arranged for piano trio by Isang Enders.
With the three piano trios published in 1795, Op. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with salon music and raised it up to rival the string quartet. In these works, Beethoven saw the true start of his creative journey. Likely to have been composed (at least in a preliminary version) before his move from his native Bonn to Haydn and Mozart’s Vienna, the Trio in E flat major, Op. 1 No. 1, reveals a composer who, while still drawing inspiration from his illustrious elders, begins to display his own witty personality marked by impish, sometimes tigerish playfulness. Composed about fifteen years later, the two Op. 70 trios ‘raise the genre to a level from which the later piano trio literature could move forward’ in the words of Beethoven specialist Lewis Lockwood. Indeed, they clearly made a mark on the later trios of Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky. The first of them, played here, is the more significant. Its nickname, ‘Ghost’, refers to its unsettling central movement characterized by ‘horror’ writing, displaying a range of chilling effects. The recording concludes with an arrangement by the trio’s cellist, Isang Enders, of a catchy and eloquently simple Ukrainian Cossack tune from a collection of Beethoven’s folk song arrangements that Schubert would no doubt have loved.
The “Ghost” Trio of 1808 is remarkable Only three movements see, so don't expect a Menuet/Scherzo and Trio; instead it is straight from the chilling Largo assai ed espressivo to teh final Presto (taken at the perfect tempo: identifiably post-Allegro molto and yet with enough space for everything to count). The first movement is masterly here, the communication between the three players perfect. this is chamber music of the highest standard:
Bu it is the slow movement that is so heart-stopping. Beethoven a his most middle period daring here, the textures chilling to the core. It is called the ghost thanks to Beethoven's pupil Czerny, who suggested this might depict the appearance of the ghost in Shakespare's Hamlet:
This is he first appearance of Beethoven's Op. 70/1 on Classical Explorer> “Genesis,” Beethoven's Piano Trio in E flat, Op. 1/1 has appeared a couple of times previously, though: the excellent Rautio Trio on Resonus, and as one in the Beethoven for Three series by Ax, Kavakos and Ma. The Rautio trio captivated me, and the Sitkovetsky trio's performance is no less enchanting.
The absolute equivalence of the instrumentalists in the first movement of Op. 1/1 in the Sitkovetsky is astonishing, motifs brown from one to the other as if tossed between labs of the same organism:
I is in the daring of the Adagio cantabile that this BIS performance flies high, perhaps even eclipsing[sing my personal reference (for all of the Beethoven piano trios, in fact), the old DG set by Pierre Fournier, Wilhelm kempff and Henryk Szeryng. If you sample one track from this post, make it this one:
The Scherzo (for such it is labelled) is suing on BIS, Wu Qian's acciaccaturas perfectly crisp. The piece just gallops along, infused with the fire of youth:
The finale is again a true Presto, but gives space for the lyrical contrasting melody (and how delightful it is!):
The encore is an arrangement by Sitkovetsky Trio member Isang Enders of Beethoven's Schöne Minke, ich muß scheiden, one of his folksong arrangements, WoO (Werk one Opus) 158a. The trio arrangement makes the whole so tender. Here's the original:
... and here's the Sitkovetsky Trio:
This lovely disc is available on Amazon at this link (incidentally, Volume 2, which includes the “Archduke,” is reduced at present on that site). Streaming links below: