Beethoven: Triple Concerto, Brahms: Double Concerto - Jarvi, Trio Poseidon, Gothenburg (2010)

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Beethoven: Triple Concerto, Brahms: Double Concerto - Jarvi, Trio Poseidon, Gothenburg (2010)

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The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra performs this popular coupling of two major works for their latest Chandos recording. The two works complement one another as they both incorporate interplay and dialogue between two or more solo instruments.

Beethoven's Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano was written in 1804, and on many levels is a highly emotional work on. Beethoven had now accepted his deafness, and his desire to express himself through music had returned. This richly melodic and mature work has joyful as well as bleak moments, and might be described as a piano trio with orchestral accompaniment.

In the case of the Double Concerto of Johannes Brahms, here large stretches can be considered as a piano trio in which the orchestra takes on the role of the piano.

Trio Poseidon was formed in 2002 by Sara Trobäck Hesselink, (Leader of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra), Claes Gunnarsson, (Principal Cellist of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra) and pianist Per Lundberg (Professor at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm.) Since their inaugural season, Trio Poseidon has become one of the most sought after ensembles in their native Sweden.

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms
Performer: Sara Trobäck Hesselink, Claes Gunnarsson
Conductor: Neeme Järvi
Orchestra/Ensemble: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Trio Poseidon

Reviews: Every so often a new recording comes along that is so exceptional it deserves immediate induction into the Classical Hall of Fame. This is such a recording.


Let me begin with what is not unprecedented. Established piano trio ensembles—the Beaux Arts, Eroica, and Wanderer, among them—have taken on the solo roles in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto before. Also not uncommon, though not recent, is the coupling of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Brahms’s Double Concerto on the same disc. There is one with the Menuhins (Yehudi and Hepzibah) and Maurice Gendron; one with Oistrakh, Rostropovich, and Richter; one with Pinchas Zukerman, Ralph Kirshbaum, and John Browning; and another with Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Pierre Fournier, and Géza Anda. But beyond the coupling and fantastic performances by members of a piano trio, what elevates the current release into the very special category are (1) Neeme Järvi’s unerring instincts for unraveling the Gordian knots of these problematical scores; (2) the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s inspired playing; and (3) a recording that even by Chandos’s standards is more vivid and in-your-living-room than usual.


It’s always gratifying to a critic to have a prediction pan out. Back in Fanfare 30:5, in a review of the Trio Poseidon’s debut disc in a program of Haydn, Brahms, and Ireland, I observed that the ensemble’s tone was “opulent, its playing appropriately passionate and refulgent,” and that its new entry was “one of the best among the best.” In this, its second album, and now on a mainstream, widely distributed label, the ensemble has not let me down. The sheer dynamism, vigor, and panache the players project, especially in the Beethoven, leave all others I’ve heard sounding disengaged and half alive. The Poseidons manage to integrate themselves with the orchestra, yet always somehow to emerge on top of it. The recording, of course, helps, so that even when the orchestra is at full throttle, the soloists can be heard cutting through and ringing out.


This is welcome news in two concertos that are not exactly orchestra-friendly to the soloists. Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is an odd thing, a hybrid of sorts in both style and form. Stylistically, it may represent the emergence of a true concerted work for multiple solo instruments that breaks away from the concertato principle of the Sinfonia Concertante, while formally, it’s a transitional work dating from approximately the same time (1803–04) as the “Waldstein” Sonata, and that experiments with the same “formless” slow movement that serves as an introduction to the finale.


But it’s the musical material itself, the content of the piece more than anything else, that is seen as the Triple Concerto’s greatest liability, and what has led many to try to ignore it as the elephant in the room. Ceaseless scales and arpeggios pepper the pages of its first movement, often sounding like a blueprint for Terry Riley’s In C . The slow movement, achingly beautiful but way too short, segues into the concluding rollicking Rondo, which is way too long, without having achieved a sense of completion or closure.


In many if not most performances, much of the soloists’ contributions are lost in the general melee, for in this, perhaps more so than in any of his other concertos, Beethoven writes in a symphonic manner, treating the solo voices as obbligato parts. In other words, there are not a lot of distinct solo passages in which the orchestral din subsides to allow the soloists their moments in the sun. Which is why, as I said above, the Poseidon’s performance, and this recording, are special because they allow us to hear cutting through the orchestra what really are some very important counter-melodies and passagework in the solo parts. And suddenly, the piece no longer sounds like the cacophony of scales that greets the ears coming from countless practice rooms as one strolls down the corridor of a music conservatory.


Brahms’s “folly” of a Double Concerto presents its own set of challenges. No one would ever accuse the composer of not writing for orchestra in a symphonic manner, unless the charge was lodged against his early serenades, so that is not even worth citing as a fault. No, a more serious complaint is that a lot of the piece seems to make little or no sense. Brahms was perhaps the most circumspect and self-critical of all the great composers. An apocryphal story has it that every night he would relax and visit with friends at a local pub. On one such occasion, he was asked, “So what did you do today, Herr Brahms?” To which he replied, “I worked on my symphony. In the morning I added an eighth note; in the afternoon, I took it out.” The problem with the Double Concerto seems to be that he took out too many notes, or didn’t put enough in to begin with. The music is choppy and cryptic, with sudden stops midsentence, and paragraphs seemingly butted up against each other without transition, like enormous granite slabs upended and slammed together by some frightful tectonic force.


Of three recent Brahms Doubles I’ve reviewed, only one, a dark horse with Mihaela Martin and Frans Helmerson on Arte Nova ( Fanfare 31: 6), earned high marks. A recording with the Capuçon sibs, Renaud and Gautier (31:5), which I’d really looked forward to, turned out to have some serious intonation problems and scrappy playing. And the one with Vadim Repin and Truls Mørk (32:6), while superbly played, displayed signs of a skewed balance that diminished the presence of the violin.


On the present recording, once again, Järvi, the Gothenburg Orchestra, and Chandos do everything right. And Hesselink and Gunnarsson, the string component that makes up two-thirds of the Trio Poseidon, are so beyond any technical struggle to just play the notes that they’re able to invest their playing with a real sense of the lyrical line, making song of one of Brahms’s least songful works.


This recording is truly a five-gold-star achievement, and one that I don’t expect to be matched anytime soon. This is a must-have recommendation.