TRIO BALTHAZAR
Joan Trimble: Phantasy Trio (1940)
Shostakovich: Piano Trio No 2 in E minor, Op 67
Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor
Michael Foyle - violin
Timothy Hugh - cello
Iain Burnside - piano
Trio Balthasar is a brilliant new ensemble of leading British musicians launched last year at London’s Wigmore Hall. They have put together an imaginative, diverse programme featuring two great 20th century classics and a beautiful, rhapsodic piece by a less familiar name: Irish composer and Vaughan Williams pupil Joan Trimble. Shostakovich’s gripping work, composed during WWII, is in his most eloquent and dramatic vein. Ravel’s Trio, dating from 1914, also has veiled allusions to war, and its unbridled passion is as overwhelming as anything he wrote.