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SPILLER TRIO in Munich
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The STRAD
CD's review May 1999
Chausson: Trio in G minor op.3
Piano Quartet in A major op.30
amb 97979
Three of the Munich-based musicians featured on this superb CD are from Argentina and studied in one way or the other with the violinist Ljerko Spiller: violinist Antonio Spiller is his son, pianist Silvia Natiello-Spiller was coached by him and violist Oscar Lysy is another pupil. Cellist Wen-Sinn Yang is Swiss, of Taiwanese parentage.
The Spiller Trio gives a marvelous performance of Chausson's rather Franckian op.3 Trio, the violinist and Cellist phrasing in lovely long paragraphs and the pianist playing passionately without ever banging. The climax of the first moment is colossal. Despite its early opus, this expansive four-movement work (the second being a Scherzo) is impressively put together using the cyclic technique Chausson learned from Franck, with a recurring theme providing a unifying thread.
The presence of Cellist Yang perhaps made me more sensitive to such things, but for the first time I noticed what an oriental progression Chausson uses in his first theme in the Piano Quartet. This mature masterpiece, also in four movements, has the scherzo following the Trés calme slow movement. It, too, is give authoritative reading, the Spiller Trio and its guest finding the ideal balance between structural coherence and spontaneous expression. Sensitive piano playing and beautiful string tone are well captured in an airy 1997 Bavarian Radio recording, the Trio is equally well recorded. I marginally prefer these
performances to the fine ones by Les Musiciens on Harmonia Mundi.
Tully Potter