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Debussy, Faure & Ravel sonatas and trios

 

Shaham Erez Wallfisch Trio


Nimbus: NI5905

This is a fine introduction to a new piano trio, formed in 2009, with some of the greatest works in the French repertoire.

It was recorded this February at the Nimbus headquarters in Monmouth and quickly released.

A strong recommendation - we don't do stars and comparatives, but I'll expect it to score well.

Peter Grahame Woolf

 

Raphael Wallfisch's 60th Birthday Concert

Wigmore Hall, 15 June 2013

I attended as a paying member of the public this trio's first Wigmore Hall concert (Wigmore Hall had taken us off their accredited reviewers roster a year or so ago).

The cramped seating in the restored hall was full and as usual uncomfortable for the long-legged; for the second half I stretched luxuriously from the usher's seat at the back...

I have enjoyed Raphael Wallfisch's playing for half a century and recalled that my musician son had been at nursery school with the young Raphael...

Their Schubert trio No 1 was routine, perhaps they'd played it too often? But Brahms piano quartet Op 60 (with Raphael's wife deserting her baroque violin for the viola) was superb - maybe more of a novelty for the Trio ? And it was good to see his regular partner John York turning over.

As patron of the Grieg Society of Gt Britain, Wallfisch gave as encore a transcription of the slow movement of Grieg's violin sonata no 3, with the versatile John York accompanying, as well as having written the programme notes for the evening.

An exciting account of the Hungarian finale of the Piano Quartet Op 25 was capped by a rousing rendering of Happy Birthday before what I am assured was an unforgettable party - I wonder if it included entertainment by singing cellist Simon Wallfisch duetting with his cello?

PGW