ALC 0164 Contrasti

Amid the tough economic conditions of the interwar years, the novel trio of clarinet, violin and piano offered composers a ‘value for money’ mini orchestra. One pioneering example was Stravinsky’s own arrangement of his L’histoire du soldat, made in 1920 to garner more performance opportunities than the original seven-piece scoring could hope to achieve. Original works followed, like the three recorded here, all from the 1930s. Whereas nineteenth-century clarinet trios (Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms), cast the clarinet as a ‘replacement’ for the violin in a traditional piano trio with cello, the newer line-up gave the clarinet’s lower register plenty of room to take over the bass of the texture, as well as setting up an exciting ‘rivalry’ with the violin for the upper register.
This ensemble is strongly suited to the evocation of folk styles. Khatchaturian’s Trio, composed in 1932 while he was still a student at the Moscow Conservatory, frequently recalls the “Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian songs and dances” that he had heard while growing up in Tblisi, Georgia, and which he acknowledged to be “the natural soil nourishing all my work.” Despite its rhythmic vitality, there is a pronounced tendency towards yearning lyricism. The last movement gradually whips its Uzbek folk song into a whirling dance, but the ending is suddenly introspective, as if contemplating the festivities from a great distance.