The better part of Russia: Danish trio plays trios by Arensky and Shostakovich

 

Danish trio: Jens Elvekjaer, Soo-Kyung Hong, Soo-Jin Hong

Never strangers to living under the thumb of autocratic rule, Russians managed to absorb enough influence from Western arts to evolve styles of their own that have contributed to the European mainstream. 

Their composers were able to look inward without becoming hermetic. The foot in the door was the French language, which was historically preferred at court and among the upper class. In music, Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) paved the way.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) remains the prime example of cagey resistance, with a soupcon of accommodation, to the narrowing influence of repressive aesthetics in modern Russian music. A compact foreground for the conflicted modernism that bore prolific fruit in his compositions was the coming of age that classical music in Russia enjoyed in the late 19th century. Its crowning achievement was Tchaikovsky's. Among the lesser lights in the Romantic flowering of Russian music was Anton Arensky (1861-1906), whose enchanting trio is companioned by two Shostakovich pieces in a new release.

Trio Con Brio Copenhagen gathers piano trios by both composers from Orchid Classics. The program's stunning capstone is Shostakovich's Trio No. 2 in E minor, op. 67. You are likely to run into that work much more often than the disc's curtain-raiser, a trio titled "Poeme" that a love-smitten Shostakovich wrote at 23. In between comes Arensky's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, in which the pianist drives the action and the strings are strong partners, both decorative and substantial.

"Poeme," while full of engaging moments and a clear melodic and dramatic profile, might strike the listener as too loosely organized. It helps to realize that the student Shostakovich was under the influence of montage techniques in use among filmmakers, according to the disc's program note. 

Without such formality, basic materials for an effusion of romantic love might well feel diverse and capable of frequent interruption. The reflective episodes, as well as the dashing ones, indicate the burgeoning talent and expressive heft of a composer still widely celebrated and performed around the classical world. The capricious layout of the work engages Trio Con Brio Copenhagen fully. No abrupt turn is taken in a dismissive manner; the music is played with more maturity than it may deserve. 

Still, it's refreshing to have it on the same disc as the E-minor work, which ends in an expansive Allegretto that seems both sly and tentative at first, later rising to assertive, passionate heights. It opens with pizzicato strings against staccato figures in the piano, taken with a total commitment to the score's soft dynamics. At length, Shostakovich takes all three instruments to extremes of dynamics and register, and Trio Con Brio Copenhagen is fully responsive.

The intimately associated Danish trio (the pianist and cellist are married; the cellist and violinist are sisters) has an appropriate light touch in the scherzo movement (Allegro con brio). The players understand Shostakovich's mordant humor, and regard it, along with the short Largo that follows, as a double prelude to the intense Allegretto. The finale migrates from a wispy opening through a forceful climax before a quiet conclusion that seems to blend relief and exhaustion. The exhaustion is an interpretive matter, of course, as the players seem to have energy and commitment to spare.