Eroica Trio: Dvorak/Shostakovich/Rachmaninov
The Eroica Trio has attained a remarkable reputation in a relatively short time. The players are technically excellent; their seamless ensemble, close rapport, and fine balance prove that they started playing together as young students. Their most striking characteristics are their flamboyance, intensity, and glamorous looks; the record jacket credits the stylists of their clothes, hair, and makeup. Their long association with these works shows in their utter security and in the daring liberties they take with rhythm, tempo, and phrasing, but their excesses and exaggerations, rather than expressing an inner emotional impulse, seem superimposed for outward effect. The string players' fast, nervous vibrato is unvaried; their incessant, slow, sentimental slides--especially the cellist's--are distracting. Shostakovich, a composer given to extremes, is better suited to their approach than Dvorák: the first movement opens eerily; the rhythms are sharp and pungent; the Scherzo is very fast and brilliant, the texture clear. The slow movement is extremely slow, too lush, not bleak enough; the Finale is wild. Their own arrangement of the Rachmaninoff is good, but the playing is too extroverted.--Edith Eisler