Paian Trio: Fesca

The Strad Issue: March 2025

Description: A forgotten figure is lovingly revived with committed performances

Musicians: Paian Trio

Works: Fesca: Piano Trios nos.1 and 6

Catalogue number: CPO 555 024-2

No, me neither: I must confess that Fesca has hitherto entirely passed me by – and, despite Grove’s insistence that he is ‘remembered chiefly for his songs’, I doubt whether Alexander Fesca is actually remembered by very many people at all. Thankfully, the Paian Trio has alighted on his music and here present the first and last of his piano trios.

Fesca was born in 1820 in Karslruhe, studied in Berlin and enjoyed a decade-long career as a piano virtuoso that was cut short by his death in 1849, three months before his 29th birthday. His chamber works ‘often lack originality’, opines Grove, but these two examples are clearly products of a confident and accomplished composer.

Stringed instruments are prominent, often singing out melodies in octaves over piano figuration, although Fesca allows solo turns for his own instrument in, for example, the third-movement Trio of the earlier work (published 1840). If the ‘Archduke’ appears the primary influence on this piece, there are nods towards Mendelssohnian harmonic ingenuity and Schumannesque obliqueness as it proceeds.

The F major Trio (published in 1848) is tauter and more concentrated, opening with an imposing slow introduction, before the familiar ‘Archduke’ reminiscences return. Look out for some imaginative effects in the Scherzo, though. Both works are played as finely as they’re ever likely to be, and recorded in appealing sound.

DAVID THREASHER