Tag: David Lefkowitz

Sibelius Piano Trio Makes an Impact in Australia

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The eminent music critic Neville Cohn reviews the Trio’s debut album in NewOZartsreview. …this intriguing compilation encompasses music written by contemporary Finnish composers whose names could well be new to most listeners living beyond the borders of Scandinavia. Diego Schissi’s Nene… opens with a terrific, offbeat dance. It radiates gusto, with tricky rhythms and much pizzicato.  Listen to a background of quiet pizzicato across which runs a dream-like cello line. Later, the attention is drawn to the piano with its stab-like utterances…. David Lefkowitz’s Ruminations calls up images of Middle East dances and what might be a folksy Yiddish extemporisation, desperately melancholy and introverted…. Recordings like this don’t just happen. And those who have pooled their resources to this excellent end deserve real praise. The focused work of many has been called upon to bring this CD into being: executive producer Ann Mulally, 100th Anniversary sponsors Randy and Linda Bellous Continue Reading →

Sibelius Piano Trio Yarlung (2 CDs)

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by composer and music critic Mark Lehman Though renowned for his symphonic works, Sibelius wrote a lot of chamber music too, much of it in his early career, that remains little known.  This includes several piano trios from the 1880s that the young composer (an accomplished violinist) wrote to play with his brother and sister.  They sound nothing like his mature masterpieces but are nevertheless charming, expertly made, and brimming over with dandy tunes, inventive but always idiomatic and transparent instrumental textures, and a youthful, high-spirited delight in music-making. Korppoo Trio is the most ambitious and expansive of the three Sibelius trios on Yarlung’s program, coming in at 26 minutes, its fluent, melodic opening allegro interrupted on occasion by stabbing, rather Beethovenian assertions and even a clean-lined fugato at one point, though the overall form is classic in outline and clear as a bell.  The second movement unfolds elaborate episodes that Continue Reading →