These wonderful performances of Haydn’s Piano Trios – eight in all, across the two volumes – have long been unavailable.
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Piano Trio in C major, H.27
Piano Trio in E flat minor, H.31
Piano Trio in A flat major, H.14
Piano Trio in E flat major, H.29
András Schiff, piano
Yuuko Shiokawa, violin
Boris Pergamenschikow, cello
Recording producer: Christopher Raeburn
Recording engineers: Simon Eadon, Krzysztof Jarosz
Recording editor: Ian Watson
Recording location: Brahms Saal, Musikverein, Vienna, September 1994
‘Schiff and his colleagues relish the wit, brilliance and sheer speed of Haydn’s thoughts in the outer movements, with their comic off-beat accents, sudden changes of register and breathtaking harmonic scope. Rapid keyboard passagework is always imaginatively shaped and directed … Decca’s recording, made in Vienna’s Brahms Saal, is first-class – intimate and finely balanced, with just the right degree of ambient warmth’ Gramophone (on Volume 2)