The Chamber Music Company Purcell Room, 1 May 2003

Robert Volkmann Piano Trio in B flat minor, Op.5
Liszt Tristia (Vallee d'Obermann)
Beethoven Piano Trio in D, Op.70 No.1 (Ghost)

As a critic one was drawn to hear a Volkmann trio, and intrigued that there exists one by Liszt. That the journey to the Purcell Room was wisely undertaken was established at the outset by The Chamber Music Company (Lucy Waterhouse, Nicola Baxter & Mark Troop) with a sterling account of the tricky Ghost trio, brusque in the opening movement, eerie in the eponymous slow movement; controlled vibrato, sparing use of pedal, all directed to the music and to Beethoven; no gloss or self-regarding 'interpretation'.

This was a well planned and satisfying trio recital by a group not known to me, although they have been active since 1986, founded by pianist Mark Troop to promote 'classic concerts of flair & imagination - - rediscover neglected works and create opportunities for new music', these aims according closely with those of Musical Pointers.

The Liszt is quite a discovery, an austere and memorably expressive quarter hour piece which should find a place in many a piano trio recital. One of the Volkmann trios (was it this one?) was a favourite of Liszt's; they were popular until the 1920s then disappeared - two of them are on Cpo Records 999128 - details and sound samples at Amazon. The two movement Op 5 is serious and begins and ends largo.

The model programme notes on a single side were fully informative, and free; a welcome change from the usual costly glossy productions. I can do no better than to reproduce the text below (instead of paraphrasing it!) and encourage you to go to another of their concerts.

Meanwhile, Lucy Waterhouse can be heard in one of her alter egos with tangos by some twenty composers - BMIC @ St Cyprian's series 27 May - details and sound samples at Tango Volcano's beautiful website www.tangovolcano.com

Peter Grahame Woolf

The Chamber Music Company presents a programme built around the great Bb minor piano trio of Robert Volkmann, beloved of Liszt. We have unearthed a genuine trio by Liszt himself, and added Beethoven's most operatic trio, as inspirational forebears to Volkmann's passionate outpouring. The rediscovery of this notable work not only adds new repertoire to the late Romantic genre, but rightfully restores a trio that, despite catapulting is composer to European- wide fame and the endorsement of the 19th Century's greatest performers, mysteriously disappeared from concert programmes after the 1920s.

The highly programmatic character of the Ghost Trio's central movement, from which the work takes its name, is one significant indication that Beethoven was moving in the direction of musical Romanticism. The eerie effects, mysterious rumblings, spectral aura and bizarre notation replete with thirty-second and sixty-fourth notes, seem to be derived from sketches Beethoven made for an abandoned opera based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, a subject that vastly appealed to the Romantic age.

LISZT Tristia (La Vallee d'Obermann) Originally a piano piece, the composer's pupil Eduard Lassen arranged it for piano trio. Liszt, inspired, added a prologue and numerous additions to Lassen's version. As these were composed in Liszt's late, tonally uncertain, period of the 1880s, the trio differs substantially from earlier incarnations, enough to be regarded as a separate work. Composed in one movement, the piece divides into several rhetorical sections, with the main expressive weight in the string parts, and with keyboard effects similar to those of the Ghost slow movement.

VOLKMANN Trio in B flat minor, Opus 5 Largo; Allegretto - Allegro con brio - piu lento - Allegro con bn'o - Largo
Robert Volkmann, born in Germany in 1815, was intimately associated with the city of Budapest, where he spent a great deal of his life. His harmonies are more conservative than those of Liszt, who was older by four years, but his rhythms show a marked tendency towards Hungarian metres and cross rhythms. In Leipzig, Volkmann met several times with Schumann, and in Vienna became close friends with Brahms. However he would be associated forever with the more progressive German school after the composition of the Bb minor trio in 1852, which was taken up by Franz Liszt and Hans von Billow, and admired greatly by Wagner. Written in two brooding, passionate movements, the trio pays homage to Beethoven in its seriousness and to Liszt in its structure and operatic utterance. Hans von Billow reported: "When Liszt had a stranger visiting him, for whom he wished to provide a superlative enjoyment, he played Volkmann's trio with his compatriot Joachim and Cossmann the cellist."