Biography

Misha Keylin  -  violin
Sergey Antonov  -  cello
Ilya Kazantsev  -  piano

One of the world’s leading ensembles of its kind, the Hermitage Piano Trio, founded in 2011, takes its name from St. Petersburg’s renowned art museum. Just as the Hermitage Museum represents both the very essence and history of Russia, while also using its collection to embrace and promote cultures from around the world, the Hermitage Piano Trio embodies the majesty of its Russian lineage, while at the same time including in its immense repertory works ranging from Russian masterpieces to the central European tradition to contemporary commissions. Now based in New York, the Trio has made its mark for impeccable musicianship, sumptuous sound and interpretative range. It now records for the Reference label. Its first release was a Rachmaninoff program (the two trios plus the Vocalise), which received three GRAMMY nominations, and its most recent CD is devoted to the music of Dvořák. Each of the Trio’s members enjoys a brilliant career in his own right. Violinist Misha Keylin has performed in nearly fifty countries on five continents as a soloist, and has recorded to great acclaim all of Vieuxtemps’ solo works with orchestra. Cellist Sergey Antonov is one of the youngest cellists ever awarded the gold medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. And pianist Ilya Kazantsev’s many awards and honours include first prize at the Nikolai Rubinstein International Competition as well as top prizes at the International Chopin Competition and the World Piano Competition USA. 2nd LMMC appearance.

https://hermitagepianotrio.com/

Notes

Schumann wrote the first two of his three piano trios in 1847. In 1851, a third trio appeared, the one we hear this afternoon. This one has long existed on the edges of the repertory, and remains the least performed of the composer’s three piano trios; today’s performance offers a rare opportunity to hear it. Biographer Eric Jensen notes its overall “struggle to triumph,” a work “unusually melancholy in mood [which] Schumann … attempted to lighten in the finale.” Jensen also notes the increased use of asymmetrical melodies and motivic development in Schumann’s work at the time. The latter quality can be observed especially in the monothematic (single theme) first movement of this trio.

Josef Suk, a compatriot of Dvořák and Smetana, specialized in instrumental music. The Piano Trio, as its opus number 2 implies, was an early work, composed in 1889 and revised the following year. If not quite up to the standards of a Dvořák or Brahms piano trio, it was still an impressive work for a youth. All the movements are quite short, yet compactly written; one does not feel they should be longer without tedium setting in. The first movement is in standard sonata-allegro form, with a robust opening theme and a second theme of soaring lyricism announced by the cello. The second movement is a gracious Andante set to a lilting rhythmic pattern. The Vivace finale contrasts a highly syncopated first theme in C minor, with a lyrical second in E-flat major. The brief development section rises to a dynamic level of fortississimo, after which the two themes return in sequence, the second now in C major, the key that brings the Trio to a joyous close.

When Mendelssohn brought out his First Piano Trio (D minor) in 1839, Schumann called it “the master trio of our time” and dubbed Mendelssohn “the Mozart of the nineteenth century.” Despite the flowering of the age of romanticism in which Schumann lived, most hallmarks of the classical style of Mozart ‒ elegance, balance, fluency, smoothly lyrical melodies and formal mastery – are all found in Schumann’s C-minor Piano Trio, composed six years after the D-minor Trio. The first movement, in perfectly constructed sonata-form, opens with a restless, flowing subject for the piano, soon joined by the strings. The second subject is a glorious, life-affirming theme in E-flat major. The ternary form (ABA) slow movement offers a good measure of consolation after the relentless pace and intensity of the first. The Scherzo flies by in a blizzard of notes with much imitative writing and a vaguely Hungarian gypsy flavour. The finale looks forward to Brahms in its powerful sonorities, massive chords for the piano, extremes of range, seriousness of purpose and overall intensity.

Robert Markow