Home listening - the tricky business of the piano trio

The Guardian 0

Fine new releases from Trio Wanderer and the Gould Piano Trio. Elsewhere, George Benjamin and Martin Crimp don’t quite reveal all

• Put a piano together with a single violin and a single cello and you have a potential problem, since the huge sound of the modern keyboard can easily drown out two string instruments. So the form of the piano trio needs careful handling: in Haydn’s time the keyboard was expected to be the primary soloist, with the strings accompanying. But in five superbly conceived piano trios of the 1790s, as sensitively played and balanced by Trio Wanderer (Harmonia Mundi), the violin becomes emancipated; rising above the textures in the remarkable E flat minor Trio Hob XV 31. In this form, Haydn feels free to experiment: the XV 14 Trio in A flat seems to push the surprises to their limits, and there are quite wonderful modulations and unexpected sidesteps throughout. Deft, subtle playing.