MARSCHENER: Piano Trios

Beethoven Trio Ravensburg

CPO 999721

Heinrich August Marschner should be known to every music lover primarily for his romantic magic and haunted operas, especially his "Vampyr" of 1828. In his time he was also considered the most important opera composer between Weber and Wagner, later he was completely supplanted by Meyerbeer and Wagner.

Born in Zittau in Upper Lusatia in 1795, after abandoning the study of law in Leipzig in favor of music, he became a music teacher and Kapellmeister in Pressburg, then Music Director at the Dresden Opera, and finally Court Kapellmeister in Hanover, where he died in 1861 in enforced retirement - forgotten by his environment. Due to the failures of his later operas "Das Schloß am Etna" (1836) and "Der Bäbu" (1838), Marschner devoted himself more to instrumental music from 1840 on, including once again (after a youthful work from 1823) the composition of piano trios. The two trios opp. 111 and 138, recorded for the first time by the Beethoven Trio Ravensburg, show Marschner's striving for cyclical unity. Sophisticated linkages and unusual form formations show that these works have been unjustly forgotten.

Works:

•Marschner, H A: Piano Trio No. 2 in G minor, Op. 111
• Marschner, H A: Piano Trio No. 5 in D minor, Op. 138

CD x 1

CPO

16.11.01

761203972128