Darkness and drama aplenty from three master musicians

Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis: Mendelssohn

The Strad Issue: November 2024

Description: Darkness and drama aplenty from three master musicians

Musicians: Joshua Bell (violin) Steven Isserlis (cello) Jeremy Denk (piano)

Works: Mendelssohn: Piano Trios: no.1 in D minor, no.2 in C minor

Catalogue number: SONY CLASSICAL 1980283248-2

If you’re wondering where you might have seen these three together before, they teamed up almost a decade ago for a recording of the original version of Brahms’s First Piano Trio as a coupling for Bell and Isserlis’s Double Concerto. More recently, they undertook a short tour together.

So you can rest assured that these are fully road-tested interpretations – their little tugs of rubato feel entirely organic, and Bell and Isserlis play off each other in a way that can only come from long and genuine friendship. The cellist takes the lead in the D minor Trio, and his pensive tone forms a solid basis for the violinist’s reply, all underpinned by Jeremy Denk’s unimpeachable pianism. And when the two string players sing out in octaves, they seemingly breathe as one. The slow movements – which can in the wrong hands tip over into sentimentality – are kept relatively dry-eyed and mobile, and the elfin lightness of the scherzos is not over-indulged, with that of the C minor Trio coming over darker and knottier than it sometimes sounds.

You may wish for a little more theatricality as the D minor Trio unfolds but the C minor is wound more tautly from the outset, so that the final statement of the finale’s chorale subject truly comes across as suitably cathartic – one of the great moments in chamber music. As a bonus, the trio offers Mendelssohn’s first thoughts on the D minor’s slow movement, which offers a fascinating glimpse into his working practice.

DAVID THREASHER