Disk of 2024
Trio con Brio Copenhagen - album 'The Passenger' - CD Review, February 5th, 2024
Trio con Brio Copenhagen - 'The Passenger' album - CD Review, February 5th, 2024
This album was recorded at the Concert Hall of the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and officially released on February 2nd, 2024, on the Orchid Classics label. It is an album of chamber music printed by Trio con Brio, one of Europe's leading chamber ensembles, founded in 1999 at the Vienna University of Music and Arts. The ensemble is currently based in Copenhagen and consists of two South Korean musicians - violinist Soo-Jin and cellist Soo-Kyung Hong, together with Danish pianist Jens Elvekjaer, husband of the ensemble's cellist. The three performers have won the admiration of international audiences and critics for their colorful and fresh contemporary interpretations. They have won numerous competitions, including the ARD competition in Munich and the Trondheim competition, and have given recitals on major stages in Europe, North America and Asia. They also have a rich discography reflecting the variety of their repertoire, with Trio con Brio Copenhagen's latest album, Trio con Brio Copenhagen, being released to mark its 25th anniversary.
The album features two emblematic works from the chamber repertoire - Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Trio op. 24 in A minor and Franz Schubert's Piano Trio No. 2, compositions that offer an "encounter with reflections on life, death and ethereal beauty", say the ensemble members. Both composers, although living in very different times and environments, wrote these scores in their youth, in dark times for them: Weinberg had lost his family in World War II when he composed the Trio op. 24, and Franz Schubert was ill and nearing the end of his life when he published the Trio op. 100. He would die less than a year later. The last work, based on a Swedish song and filled with dramatic melodies, contrasting climactic passages with dark, meditative sequences, is performed with great passion and expressivity by the Trio con Brio ensemble from Copenhagen.
