Smetana, Suk and Novák: Piano Trios

Album review

For its 2005 release on Supraphon, the second incarnation of the Smetana Trio presents three important Czech works for piano, violin, and cello, which, since they are so passionately played here, must be at the heart of its repertoire, as they were for the first Smetana (later Czech) Trio of the 1930s. Bedrich Smetana's tragically autobiographical Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15 (1855); Josef Suk's youthfully ardent Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 2, (1889, revised 1890-1891); and Vítezslav Novák's agonized Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 27, "Quasi una ballata" (1902) are middle and late Romantic chamber works that share a common musical language of Germanic origin -- by way of Schumann and Brahms -- but one filtered to varying extents through the plaintive songs and vigorous dance styles of Bohemian and other eastern European folk music. Suk's pretty but artificial Elegie for piano trio, Op. 23 (1902), is apparently provided as filler, and may be discounted as little more than fin de siècle fluff. Pianist Jitka Cechová, violinist Jana Nováková, and cellist Jan Pálenícek are fully committed in their energetic performances and are remarkably well-recorded in this presentation, with lifelike presence and focus, yet without the grit or extraneous noises of close-up miking.

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