Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg aren’t usually regarded as bedfellows: who thinks of Swan Lake when battling through the Austrian’s 12-tone thickets? Yet both, in different ways, were musical romantics, and their juxtaposition makes fascinating listening, especially in the hands of the forthright and luminous Amsterdam Piano Trio.
The Tchaikovsky work is his epic Piano Trio of 1882, written in memory of his late mentor Nikolai Rubenstein. Occasionally Andrey Gugnin might hammer too much in the piano part but that’s only when Tchaikovsky’s textures overload what three players can wisely handle. Once into the lengthy second movement true chamber music ensues, and the subtleties of mood and touch are beautiful to behold.
Then comes Schoenberg’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht of 1899, when tonality was still his friend: a work whose late romantic ache easily survives Henk Guittart’s recent reduction for a piano trio. “Two figures,” Schoenberg’s poetic source relates, “walk through the bare, cold grove.” Well, the grove’s now barer still, yet the moon still shines, the poem’s lovers still bare their souls and the music’s sinuous path still exerts a powerful grip.