• 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.
• Move forward a century to the 1890s, and Saint-Saëns’s underrated Piano Trio No 2 (Champs Hill) uses a totally different structure. Instruments weave a symphonic web of argument and counter-argument: a five-movement piece full of an emotional turmoil we do not usually associate with Saint-Saëns. The turbulent opening, the jumpy Allegretto (unusually in 5/4 time), two shorter movements and then a densely wrought finale with intricate counterpoint are all powerfully projected by the Gould Piano Trio. The much earlier Piano Trio No 1 is more innocent, but typically skilful, and there is a postscript in the unusual movement La muse et le poète of 1909. Bizarrely, the CD nowhere allows us to know the names of the Gould’s three players: they are Lucy Gould (violin), Alice Neary (cello) and Benjamin Frith (piano).
• The operatic event of the moment is the appearance at the Royal Opera of a new work from the composer of the much-praised Written on Skin, George Benjamin. Lessons in Love and Violence was premiered last Thursday. In preparation for the Radio 3 broadcast, on 2 June (when the Observer’s Fiona Maddocks will discuss the opera with Tom Service), Music Matters featured an interview (available on iPlayer and as a podcast) with Benjamin and his now constant librettist, Martin Crimp. Kate Molleson asks all the right questions about how words and music interact in the creation of a new work, but the mystery of the process remains.
