Album: Smetana / Liszt, Piano Trio / Elegies – Trio Wanderer (Harmonia Mundi)

Trio Wanderer's exploration of the Romantic elegy brings together two composers of vastly different traditions.

Liszt's admiration for Smetana's 1855 Piano Trio in G minor – written in response to his daughter's death – was not widely shared. Even now the textures seem awkward. Pianist Vincent Coq's swanlike voicing of this ugly duckling work isn't matched by violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian or cellist Raphaël Pidoux, though they excel together in Liszt's "Tristia" and separately in "Romance oubliée" and "La lugubre gondola".