Trio Wanderer to Release New Album

Trio Wanderer is a French piano trio made up of Vincent Coq, piano, Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, violin, and Raphaël Pidoux, cello, all graduates of the Conservatoire de Paris. They have been recording for Harmonia Mundi since 1999, and their latest album will be released this coming Friday. The full title of the album is Art nouveau: French chamber music around 1900; and, as many (most?) readers will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Similarly, most readers will probably (and correctly) associate this period with Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, the latter being a little more than a decade younger than the former. Those familiar with Debussy are likely to appreciate the performances of his L. 135 cello sonata in D minor, which was followed shortly thereafter by the L. 140 violin sonata in G minor. Less familiar will be one of his earliest compositions, the L. 5 piano trio in G major. Ravel is probably best known for his M. 67 piano trio in A minor, but the album also includes the M. 73 sonata for violin and cello.

Photograph of Mel Bonis taken around 1900, by which time both Debussy and Ravel had honed their skills as composers (photographer unidentified, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The earliest work in the collection is Édouard Lalo’s Opus 26, the last of his three piano trios, composed in 1880. This is the first work on the album and basically serves as a “threshold” for what is to come. There are also two short compositions by Mel Bonis: the Opus 76 “Soir - Matin” piano trio and the Opus 71 barcarolle for solo piano. Bonis is likely to be the least known to most listeners. However, her lifetime extended from 1858 to 1937, during which she composed over 300 original works.

Thus, while the selections by both Debussy and Ravel are likely to be familiar to many listeners (particularly those interested in chamber music), both Lalo and Bonis will contribute significantly to the selection and ordering of the tracks, serving up a thoroughly engaging journey of discovery.