Beethoven - The Piano Trios review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 0

(Deutsche Grammophon, three CDs)
Fifty years after his classic recordings with Jacqueline du Pre, Barenboim joins with his violinist son and cellist Kian Soltani to bring nuance and thoughtfulness to these seven piano trios

Daniel Barenboim spent lockdown earlier this year practising the piano. One of the fruits of that intensive work has been his fifth complete recording of the Beethoven sonatas, together with the Diabelli Variations, which appeared in October. But Barenboim had already begun to revisit Beethoven for this year’s anniversary 12 months ago, when he performed the piano trios in two concerts in Berlin, with his violinist son Michael and the cellist Kian Soltani, both former members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Whether these new discs are taken directly from those live performances isn’t clear, but they were certainly recorded in the same venue, the Pierre Boulez Saal.

The numbering of Beethoven’s piano trios is confused, but there are seven works included in this set – the three that Beethoven designated as his official Op 1, the two works of Op 70, the first of them known as the Ghost Trio, and the Archduke Trio, Op 97, as well as the curious Kakadu Variations, with their deceptively late opus number, Op 121a. It’s exactly 50 years since Barenboim recorded these works with his first wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré, and the violinist Pinchas Zukerman, performances that have become classics because of their energy, enthusiasm and brilliance, irresistible qualities that easily outweigh the lack of subtlety in some of the playing.