FLUTE, CELLO & PIANO TRIOS - FortePiano Trio

FLUTE, CELLO & PIANO TRIOS ( CVLD242 )

Author : Mendelssohn, Weber, Martinu
Performer : FortePiano Trio (Leonora Armellini, Ludovico Armellini, Tommaso Benciolini)

Tracks

FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY
Trio in D minor op.49
01 - Very Cheerful Agitated
02 - Andante with motorcycle, Tranquillo
03 - Scherzo, Light and lively
04 - Finale, Allegro assai passione

CARL MARIA VON WEBER
Trio in G minor op.63
05 - Moderate Allegro
06 - Scherzo, Allegro vivace
07 - Expressive Andante
08 - Finale, Allegro

BOHUSLAV MARTINU
Trio for flute, cello and piano
09 - Poco allegretto
10 - Slowly
11 - Andante, Allegro scherzoso


Leonora Armellini, piano
Tommaso Benciolini, flute
Ludovico Armellini, cello

24bit/88.2kHz original live-in-studio recording, Preganziol, April 14th, 2013

Notes

FortePianoTrio
Composed of Tommaso Benciolini on flute and the twins Ludovico and Leonora Armellini on cello and piano respectively, the FortePiano Trio was born from the desire to bring together the diverse and eclectic personalities of three friends in a common musical project with the intent of spreading and expanding the repertoire for this unusual formation. All graduated with top marks and honors at a very young age and winners of national and international competitions, they have perfected their skills with great masters including Lilya Zilberstein, Pierre-Yves Artaud, Mario Caroli and Giovanni Sollima at some of the most prestigious musical institutions in Europe such as the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, the Scuola Universitaria di Musica della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris.
In 2012, the FortePiano Trio began an intense concert activity that led it to perform
regularly in the main Italian cities.
The young group is also involved in the commissioning and dissemination of new music, and is the dedicatee of the “Trio in two movements” by the composer Simone Tonin and the “Merry Gentlemen Variations, Trio Fantasia on a Christmas Carol” by the composer and conductor Andrea Battistoni, receiving the approval of the public and critics at every performance.

«It is the master trio of the present […] a masterpiece that after many years will still delight grandchildren and great-grandchildren». This is how Robert Schumann presented in 1840 the Trio in D minor op. 49 for violin, cello and piano by Felix Mendelssohn, just published by the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel. A happy creation of the «Mozart of the twentieth century – Schumann wrote again – the most lucid musician who was the first to clearly see and reconcile the contradictions of the age». Even the English publisher JJ Ever was ready to bet on the popularity that the work would encounter, with its serene discursiveness to which the elegant embroidery of the piano part adds effects of brilliance. Ever asked Mendelssohn for an arrangement of the Trio, and specifically of the second and third movements, with the flute instead of the violin, to be published as an Andante and rondo (from op. 49). The author ultimately decides to transcribe the entire work for piano, flute and cello, but does not limit himself to a simple transposition of the violin part. In adapting the violin original to the flute, Mendelssohn takes into account the different sound peculiarities of the wind instrument and introduces some significant variations (octave transpositions, changes in rhythmic figures and minor accommodations) that constitute a real rethinking of the part in function of the changed sound balances between the three instruments.

In a nineteenth century that for the most part did not seem to be very fond of wind instruments, at least among its major musical protagonists, Carl Maria von Weber instead showed a particular predilection for some of them; clarinet, horn and bassoon above all, for their evocative sounds so suited to representing the "supernatural nature" that forms the backdrop to his romantic melodramas (Weber also dedicated some concerts to the three instruments). The flute also finds a place in several chamber music works by the composer, the most famous of which is the Trio in G minor op. 63 for flute, cello and piano, composed between 1818 and 1819.
The pleasantly colloquial character of the work is evident from the composure of its formal structure in four movements, all adhering to classical models, and in their general expressive balance. Without renouncing some more vivid romantic colours in the final movements, the Trio remains within a range of “affects” whose reference measure is given by the carefree dance-like character of the brief “Scherzo” and the gentle lieder-like melody of the “Andante espressivo” entitled Schäfers Klage (The Shepherd’s Lament).

Already an undisciplined and rebellious child prodigy, as well as a gifted violinist, the Bohemian naturalized American Bohuslav Martinu was an artistically free spirit, although attentive to the various directions of the twentieth-century musical and cultural avant-gardes, which he frequented assiduously during his long stay in Paris (1928-1940), from where he moved to the United States and remained there until 1953. In his production Martinu gives space to the moods of Czech folklore, especially in the rhythmic component always in strong evidence in his works, marked by a general climate of serenity and eclectic pleasure in making music that can also be found in the Trio in F major for flute, cello and piano (1944). The dispassionate and ironic, but not provocative, aspect of his creativity can be identified in his motor vitality, in his entirely personal interpretation of tonal syntax, and in the sometimes capricious changeability of his expressive moods; stylistic peculiarities that in the Trio have their disciplining element in the classicist formalism of the structures to which the composer deliberately adheres to indulge his underlying lyrical and nostalgic vein, particularly evident in the pensive central «Adagio». The first movement, «Poco Allegretto», and the finale «Allegretto scherzando» (connected to the central movement by a cadence, «Andante», of the flute solo) have in common a dry linearity of writing in which the ease of the rhythmic flow and the close dialogue between the three instruments, always in perfect balance with each other, assume full evidence.
Marco Mattresses

Musical Producer: Leopoldo Armellini
Recording, mixing and mastering engineer: Marco Lincetto
Editing: Mattia Zanatta
Cover photo by Marco Lincetto