Dutch Masters: Van Baerle Trio

BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

Romantic chamber music at its finest: Schumann’s engrossing canons and Brahms at his most lyrical.

In the 1840s Schumann had become ‘engrossed’, as he put it, in the study of counterpoint – the weaving together of separate musical lines. He wrote his six Canonic Études for the ‘pedal piano’, an instrument which, like the organ, had an extra set of pedals – and therefore an additional musical line. These delightfully intricate studies were subsequently arranged for piano trio by Theodor Kirchner.

Brahms had two goes at his Piano Trio No 1: the first when he composed it at just 21, and the second when he revised it 36 years later, remarking to Clara Schumann that ‘it will not be so dreary as before’. This was somewhat self-deprecating: Brahms retained the beautiful opening melody, as well as the whole of the playful Scherzo. But the revised version is certainly one of his most beguiling and uninhibited works — vigorous youth filtered through wisdom and experience.

The award-winning Van Baerle Trio, named for the street in Amsterdam where they first played together, are renowned for their energetic and exuberant interpretations of 19th-century repertoire.

Programme: Robert Schumann arr Theodor Kirchner · Excerpts from ‘6 Etudes in Canonic Form’ · Johannes Brahms · Piano Trio No 1 — Van Baerle Trio