The Passenger

Album review

One has to delve into the booklet notes for an explanation of the title of this album by the Trio con Brio Copenhagen; The Passenger was a 1968 Mieczysław Weinberg opera on a concentration camp theme. One of the themes in the slow movement of Weinberg's Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 24, is related to one from that opera. That gives an idea of this fine album's overall flavor, which is grim and death-haunted. Weinberg's trio was composed shortly after he left Poland for the Soviet Union, steps ahead of the invading Germans. There have been several strong recordings of this magnificent work, but this one is a real standout. The group captures the atmosphere of tension and fear that gave birth to the work -- sample the intense violin-and-cello duo in the transition near the beginning of the first movement -- and the power it draws from the contrast between the abstract movement procedures and titles and the grim emotional content. The Trio con Brio Copenhagen pairs the Weinberg with the Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 100, of Schubert, attempting to link the two works with the theme of death. To this end, the players give the Schubert a lot of speed and nervous energy (sample the Scherzo), and the notes refer to the possibility that the slow movement is based on a Swedish folk song about the setting sun. This is a bit harder to accept; when he wrote this trio, Schubert wasn't necessarily planning on dying, and there is a good deal of sheer Viennese tunefulness in the work that gets somewhat short shrift here. This is, however, a fresh look at a well-trodden work, and that has to count for something. The Trio con Brio Copenhagen's reading of the Weinberg trio, moreover, is well worth the price of admission all by itself.

© James Manheim /TiVo