Robert Kahn; Vincent d'Indy - Trios for Piano, Clarinet & Cello (Bawandi Trio)

Information

Composer: Robert Kahn; Vincent d'Indy

• Kahn - Clarinet Trio in G Minor, Op. 45
• Indy - Clarinet Trio in B-Flat Major, Op. 29

Bawandi Trio

    Mario Häring, piano

    Patrick Hollich, clarinet

    Alexandre Castro-Balbi, cello

Date: 2023

Label: CPO

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Review

Talk about a chamber programme scoring off the chart for niche factor. In fact it’s entirely forgivable to have never even heard of Robert Kahn (1865-1951), a German-Jewish composer and teacher who enjoyed a highly successful career, championed notably by Joachim and Brahms, before Nazi persecution necessitated a late-life flight to England, where he lived the remainder of his life in relative obscurity. And while Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) hasn’t been quite as entirely forgotten since his own lifetime success, he’s hardly mainstream. That can equally be said of piano, clarinet and cello trios, despite the combination being a delectable-sounding one, so I’ll be fascinated to see how the newly formed Bawandi Trio develops repertoire-wise over the coming years. For the moment, though, pianist Mario Häring, clarinettist Patrick Hollich and cellist Alexandre Castro-Balbi have chosen to launch themselves with an attempt to prove that Kahn and d’Indy deserve to be reassessed, based on the hypothesis that it was largely their respective environments – Kahn’s Jewishness and d’Indy’s predilection for German culture – that were responsible for their posthumous neglect.

As far as the d’Indy Trio goes, that hypothesis holds some water. Substantial in length and individual of language, this work in four luxurious-textured movements sounds on the one hand thoroughly French, with fluid lines and harmonies and a finale teeming with capriciously scampering figures, but also with something solidly German in its backbone. The Kahn, meanwhile, was inspired by and modelled on Brahms’s various clarinet chamber works for clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld and sounds as much. So, while it’s indisputably attractive, lyrical and a fine piece of musical workmanship, it doesn’t present Kahn as any more worthy of concerted reassessment than his equally forgotten British contemporary Alexander Mackenzie. Still, the performances themselves are very enjoyable. Both works come imbued with a nice sense of flexibility and flow, the chamber dynamic sounding already well-oiled, and the ensemble’s respective rich, warm tonal qualities satisfyingly sympathetic. The colouring has some lovely detail, too – try 6'20" in d’Indy’s finale, where there’s an especially effective switching of tone and phrasing to produce a wilder folk-song flavour.

The obvious comparison recording is Stephan Koncz, Christoph Traxler and Daniel Ottensamer’s recent ‘The Clarinet Trio Anthology’ (Decca), on which both trios come with a slightly brighter sparkle, not least due to faster tempos. Still, the Bawandi Trio make every bit as much of a case for its more relaxed speeds. So while I’m unconvinced that a Kahn and d’Indy pairing was the way for a trio of such accomplished young musicians to make a high-impact recording debut, lovers of elegantly rendered 19th century rarities need not hesitate.

— Charlotte Gardner

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Robert Kahn (21 July 1865 – 29 May 1951) was a German composer, pianist and teacher. Born into a prominent Jewish family, he showed musical talent early and studied composition at the Berlin Hochschule. Influenced by close relationships with Joseph Joachim and especially Johannes Brahms, Kahn developed a conservative, classical-Romantic style that remained unchanged despite the rise of musical modernism. He composed extensively for voice, choir, piano and chamber ensembles, including settings of texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He spent his final years in Britain after being forced to emigrate in 1938.

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Vincent d'Indy (27 March 1851 – 2 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher, who sought to reform French music through the influence of César Franck and the Bach-Beethoven-Wagner tradition Germanic. Known for meticulous composition and lyrical expression, he produced important operatic and symphonic works, including Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français and Istar. In 1894, he co-founded the Schola Cantorum in Paris, promoting Gregorian chant and early music studies. D'Indy also collected and arranged folk songs and influenced many composers through his teaching and writings.

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