Schoenberg; Hindemith - String Trios

The Guardian 100

Trio Zimmerman give an utterly lucid rendition of Schoenberg’s fierce, challenging String Trio Op 45, and illuminate Hindemith with panache

The three principal instruments of the orchestral string family might seem to offer the most natural of chamber-music combinations, yet the number of unqualified great works in the string-trio repertory can be counted on the fingers of one hand. With due deference to Beethoven’s examples, all composed before he reached 30, it’s arguable that the genre has produced only two masterpieces. One of them is Mozart’s E flat Divertimento, K563, and the other is Schoenberg’s String Trio Op 45.

Technically and musically, Schoenberg’s trio remains one of the most challenging works in the entire chamber-music repertory. It’s a fierce, densely argued 18-minute single movement in five sections, written in 1946 while the composer was recovering from a heart attack. Indeed, Schoenberg later revealed it was a depiction of his illness, even a “humorous” one, while others have claimed that it went further than that, with portrayals of the nurses who cared for him, and even of the injections they gave him.