The talented Trio Anima Mundi , based in Melbourne, have announced that they will be recording all 27 piano trios by Carl Reissiger.
Wow, that's quite a project. Good for them!
Oh, good grief!
Not good grief, just GOOD!! Having played a approximately a dozen of them, I can attest that these are wonderful works deserving to be recorded. Schumann was very jealous of Reissiger's piano trios, moaning that everything was just so perfect, so beautiful, so this so that and in the end called him the poor man's Schubert. An unfair comparison. Reissiger was not trying to plumb the depths as Schubert was in his D.99 and 100. Rather, R's trios were meant as an epicurean feast of entertainment.
Reissiger had a superb gift for melody. And the piano trio was his metier. Unfortunately, his string quartets were generally not as fine, although some are pretty good, unfotunately not the Op.111 which were stupidly recorded on period instruments upon which they would not have been played even in Reissiger's time. There is a thread here somewhere about those recordings.
In my opinion, recording his piano trios is a big deal. Two were recorded sometime ago...Op.85 and Op.164 by the Trio Art Nouveau on a Hungaroton CD and can be heard on Youtube.
Oh, I wasn't complaining, Santo, just staggered by the ambition of the enterprise. I do agree both about the woeful string quartets recording and the quality of the two piano trios we can currently enjoy.
I know you were not complaining Mark. Just tongue in cheek. Glad you agree. Hopefully, it will not be to terribly long until we get the first installment.
Thanks to Mark's uploading skills the first installment of the Piano Trios is now available in the Download Section... and what a lovely work it is!
That wasn't too long , was it, Santo ?
...an epicurean feast of entertainment.
Yes, indeed, and thanks to Mike and Mark for providing the first course. I hope the rest are just as tasty! :)
Thanks Mark. That's great. Looking forward to hearing it.
Guess what. I realized I have an old German radio broadcast recording of the same work by the Pablo Casals Piano Trio. For the sake of comparison, I am going to try and upload it but as I have never done this before, don't know if I can. Clicked on attachments, that did not work. Maybe in the download section I can upload it...Okay, figured out. So, if it is approved, you can listen to it in downloads...
Trio Anima Mundi will be performing three more Reissiger trios in 2020:
https://www.trioanimamundi.com/2020-tam-series (https://www.trioanimamundi.com/2020-tam-series)