THREE’S COMPANY

Are piano trios having a sudden renaissance? Charlotte Gardner hears from industry professionals and from musicians who relish the repertoire offered by this flexible but underrated chamber grouping

Trio Gaspard: Jonian Ilias Kadesha, Vashti Hunter and Nicholas Rimmer

ANDREJ GRILC

Was ever a chamber genre simultaneously so beloved, so problematic and, in fact, so abounding in contradictions as the piano trio? Piano, violin and cello: three entirely contrasting tones, registers and volumes, and a dynamic requiring players to act as both personalityrich soloists and self-negating chamber players. There’s enough music to last an ensemble a lifetime, but a comparatively small complement of audience-pulling core repertoire. It’s an overall package that’s rich and fulfilling enough to devote an entire career to, but one that historically has spawned but few permanent, truly full-time and enduring ensembles with an international reach – the Beaux Arts Trio and Trio Wanderer being notable exceptions.

Yet suddenly it feels as though piano trios are everywhere. Within the middle generation, more are lasting the distance and rising in profile, albeit within a portfolio rather than a full-time career – key examples being the Gaspard and Sitkovetsky, the latter’s 2024 season including a Vienna Konzerthaus debut, returns to the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and London’s Wigmore Hall, and the release of the third instalment of its Beethoven recording cycle for BIS. Looking to the younger generation, the past decade has seen a veritable explosion of piano trios winning competitions, receiving scholarships and residencies, mastering social media and being taken on by young artist schemes, with names including the Amatis, Amelio, Astatine, Bohémo, Chagall, Consonance, Ernest, E.T.A., Hélios, Karenine, Messiaen, Hel, Orelon, Paddington, Pantoum, Sōra and Zadig trios. Some of these new-generation trios exist as key elements of portfolio careers. Others, however, are full-time pursuits, with their members’ ambitions to keep progressing on that path.

What makes this doubly fascinating is that the problems traditionally faced by permanent piano trios haven’t gone away. Concert and festival programmes, record label catalogues and management rosters still suggest that trios aren’t getting as big a bite of the cherry as quartets. Another practical issue also remains – that many of the smaller promoters and concert societies who love young artists don’t own a piano, let alone a decent one. Even more difficult is that piano trios aren’t even only competing with fellow established trios; being less blenddependent, a piano trio can achieve excellence in fewer hours of work than can a quartet, and that means that not only do many festivals prefer to form their own ad hoc artist combinations, but promoters are generally more often after the box-office appeal of a celebrity trio, whether it’s a brand new constellation or made up of regular collaborators such as Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax.

The Beaux Arts Trio in 1978 (l–r) Isidore Cohen, Menahem Pressler, Bernard Greenhouse

In other ways, though, the landscape has shifted. One driving factor being cited for the surge is the number of highly skilled pianists now around, many of whom are eschewing the competition circuit, or actively choosing a chamber career over a solo one. Likewise, never has there been such a high volume of exceptional string talent emerging from conservatoires and going into an already crowded market. In conservatoires themselves, chamber music is being promoted more and earlier, and there’s less of a division between a soloist’s track and that of an ensemble, and a greater emphasis on portfolio careers. As Young Classical Artists Trust (YCat) CEO and artistic director Alasdair Tait puts it, having witnessed this trend himself: ‘There are more and more amazing musicians out there who see the piano trio as just another option.’

The Kavakos, Ax and Ma supergroup

BEAUX ARTS PHOTO NOORD-HOLLANDS ARCHIVE. AX KAVAKOS MA PHOTO MARK ALLAN

The Sitkovetsky Trio (l-r) Alexander Sitkovetsky, Wu Qian and Isang Enders

‘THERE ARE MORE AND MORE AMAZING MUSICIANS OUT THERE WHO SEE THE PIANO TRIO AS JUST ANOTHER OPTION’

Furthermore, while the youngest trios tend not to have management, neither that nor the lack of a high-profile champion is the handicap that it used to be, because social media has handed everyone the tools to own their visibility and profile.

Career springboards are also more numerous now. Competitions, for instance, are an area cited by violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky as having thoroughly changed since he founded the Sitkovetsky Trio in 2007 with pianist Wu Qian and cellist Leonard Elschenbroich (the current cellist, since 2017, is Isang Enders). ‘We were thinking about doing a competition or two in 2008, but we couldn’t find a single one that year apart from the International Commerzbank Chamber Music Award that had just started in Frankfurt’ – which they won. ‘Somehow, in the last couple of years the number of competitions on the CVs of piano trios has risen,’ he says. Indeed, there are now more piano trio competitions to apply for than ever before, which has gone some way towards mitigating the fact that the major ‘ones to win’ – ARD, Melbourne, Osaka, Trieste and Trondheim – only take place every few years (an exception being the annual Royal Over-Seas League contest). Especially in the last decade or so, further international options have arrived on the scene, such as the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition (introduced in 2004), the Cavatina Intercollegiate Chamber Music Competition (London, 2012), the Schoenfeld International String Competition (Harbin, China, 2013), the Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition (2018) and, most recently, the Ilmari Hannikainen Piano Chamber Music Competition (Jyväskylä, Finland, 2023).

Then there are the ever-expanding remits of young artist schemes and foundations. The especially high ratio of piano trios in Europe is partly attributable to ProQuartet and the Fondation Singer-Polignac, both in Paris, and the Vienna-based European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA). And while these do not guarantee a subsequent sustained career (‘They’ve become a rite of passage,’ cautions Tait, ‘but the question is, what happens to these ensembles afterwards?’), they’re certainly a boost to those trios with the talent and intelligence to harness all they can offer. Take Trio Hélios, established in 2014. Formerly of the ECMA and currently resident at the Fondation Singer-Polignac, it also has a string of competition prizes (including second prize in the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition) and the championing of René Martin, co-founder of important French festivals such as La Folle Journée and the international piano festival of La Roque d’Anthéron as well as the record label Mirare, on which the group has so far released two albums.

Trio Hélios (l–r) Alexis Gournel, Eva Zavaro, Raphaël Jouan

For those who do make life in a piano trio work, its musical joys go far beyond the practical and individualistic ones – and it’s unique. ‘If you look at the string quartet over its 250 or so years,’ says Sitkovetsky, ‘it doesn’t change that much in terms of the prima first violin and the cello as bass, even if the middle voices become more complex as we get later. Piano trio writing changes much more. And it’s just such a combination! Everyone gets their individual go, but also they combine to play as a real unit.’

Sitkovetsky would also challenge any generalising over there being less of a need to blend. ‘If you look at Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Brahms especially, there’s lots of unison playing, and when it’s that unified string sound, it is so important to blend. I’ve had two cellists with very strong musical personalities to play with, and I love having a really strong, rich cello sound with which I can blend my soprano.’

While the piano trio repertoire is made up of a smaller body of famed masterpieces, major composers are still well represented, with forty-five from Haydn; eleven from Beethoven; six from Mozart; four from Dvořák; three each from Brahms and Schumann; two each from Schubert, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich; and a major masterpiece from both Tchaikovsky and Ravel. Also, says Tait, there’s a further core repertoire in which a piano trio sits as the nucleus: ‘One of the trio’s strengths is the real opportunity for interesting additional-people projects such as the “Trout” Quintet.’ Also, don’t forget the lesserknown trios by other big names: Copland, Debussy, Fauré, Franck, Korngold, Saint-Saëns, Smetana and Richard Strauss.

Thanks to the piano trio’s place within domestic music making from the late 18th century through to 1900, there is also an extensive body of more obscure repertoire – which in today’s saturated market is suddenly more of a boon than a handicap. Add to that the way that historical female composers could really shine in the domestic music market, and it’s even more perfect for the current zeitgeist. Sitkovetsky singles out Chaminade’s Second Trio as being particularly beautiful. Almost as good, he thinks, are the two by trail-blazing Swedish organist–composer Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929). He also advises looking beyond the ‘favourites’ within the core composers’ outputs: ‘The Mendelssohn Second Piano Trio in C minor is unbelievable – so perfectly written, but also so emotional, so warm.’

Not all record label directors are shy of piano trios, either. Take Ralph Couzens of Chandos Records, whose stable of artists includes Trio Gaspard, currently engaged in both a city-themed series and a combined commissioning project and Haydn cycle; and the Neave Trio, presently recording all sorts of under-represented gems by historical female composers. ‘Whatever the instruments are,’ says Couzens, ‘who I choose to record with is driven by repertoire, together with the quality of playing and that extra indefinable spark. And the piano trio sound world has always interested me. It’s one that’s a challenge to record with the right balance, because the cello tends to get submerged by the piano. But when you do get it right, with the clarity through all the lines, it’s wonderful.’

‘THE TRIO IS VERY MUCH AT THE FOREFRONT OF OUR CAREERS AND NOT TREATED AS A SIDE DISH’ – ALEX ANDER SITKOVE TSK Y, VIOLIN, SITKOVE TSK Y TRIO

As for how to go about founding a successful piano trio, for Tait it’s about not putting the cart before the horse. ‘Groups form because people have enjoyed playing together and something starts to emerge,’ he says. ‘The minute they become a vehicle to getting a career or following a career path that isn’t necessarily there, there’s the risk of putting a lot of energy into something that will lead to disappointment and frustration. Everything should revolve around what fulfils you personally, and your growth as a musician – and then you see what opportunities can come from it.’

Whether it will ultimately be possible for the new generation of trios to build genuine full-time careers, time will tell. But even if not, the portfolio model as described by Sitkovetsky couldn’t sound richer: ‘The trio is very much at the forefront of our careers and not treated as a side dish. But we also all have other exciting projects – concertos, playing–directing, chamber music outside the trio; and as good as we are about inspiring ourselves within the group, it’s useful for us to be able to bring things in from outside. What I love is that the three of us have managed to find an equilibrium where we don’t have to place one project above another.’