{"product_id":"beethoven-string-trios-op-9-n-1","title":"BEETHOVEN: STRING TRIOS OP 9 N","description":"The name explains all: archi is the Italian for bows and budella for gut strings. Centred around Anner Bylsma, this is an ensemble with \"a special love for historical stringed instruments\" so the booklet tells us, with the additional information that Bylsma himself plays a Gianfrancesco Pressenda cello of 1835 alongside the 1727 Stradivari violin of Vera Beths and the 1785 William Forster viola of Jürgen Kussmaul. Their distinctive, slightly reedy timbre certainly takes you back in imagination to days of yore when string trios were more often heard in stately homes than in large concert-halls. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Just in case any reader at this point might be fearing bespectacled pedantry, let me hasten to say that the playing could scarcely be more sprightly and volatile. At times I even wondered if these artists were over-immediate in response to every passing dot, dash and dynamic nuance. Now and again I felt Beethoven needed less impressionably malleable, more firmly drawn, classical lines. But that said, they communicate their own relish of the music enough to make nonsense of the charge that he was 'unenthusiastic' about the string trio medium. Once again—as with the splendid Mutter\/Giuranna\/Rostropovich 1989 DG recording of the complete trios—I found myself thinking that even if nothing else had come from his pen but these early works, he would still have been hailed as a genius.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As in Beethoven's even earlier set of piano trios, so again here it is the third in C minor that most clearly pre-echoes things to come. The players convey its urgency through very brisk tempos, strong dynamic contrast and pungent accentuation as well as warming to the slow movement's fuller texture enough to explain why after this work Beethoven did in fact move on to the sphere of the string quartet. The first G major Trio, in contrast, is all light and joy—despite the bite of their accents. But busy figuration from the lower strings in the course of the finale is allowed to sound scrub-brushy as well as bottom-heavy. In the suaver No, 2 in D, I thought the third movement too fast for a Menuetto, with insufficient rhythmic definition behind its teasing opening phrase (the latter is also true of the equally teasing last two bars of the finale's leading theme). But this movement, and even more the Andante, allows us to enjoy Bylsma's cello as never before. The recorded tone is forward but true.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e -- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [9\/1992]\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Sony Masterworks","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":49733788303640,"sku":"074644819021","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/hbdirect.com\/products\/beethoven-string-trios-op-9-n-1","provider":"HBDirect","version":"1.0","type":"link"}