Buyers of Beethoven piano trio cycles have plenty of recordings old and new to choose from, but Switzerland's Oliver Schnyder Trio offers novel readings. There is a distinctive feature -- fast tempos, especially in the other movements -- but the group largely avoids the pitfalls of imposing a new interpretation simply for the sake of doing so. Many of the movements have a folkish quality, with big, percussive accents placed on Beethoven's offbeat surprises. The Schnyder Piano Trio is at its strongest in the earlier trios, where the group avoids the tendency to treat the Op. 1 trios as a homogeneous unit. Beethoven's style was developing rapidly at this time, and here each trio's experimental, slightly obstreperous quality comes out. Sample the finale of the Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2, where the lickety-split tempo precisely defines the moment at which Beethoven left his teacher Haydn's influence behind (not to mention being a great deal of fun). Pianist Schnyder and his comrades also catch the important transitional role of the Piano Trio in B flat major, Op. 11 ("Gassenhauer"), probably the least often performed of the corpus; their performance bristles with surprises and difficulties. The two trios of Op. 70 are darkly dramatic, shake-your-fist-at-fate Beethoven rather than "ghostly" mood pieces. The trios with a strong lyrical component -- the very first one, and the final Piano Trio No. 7 in B flat major, Op. 97 ("Archduke") -- may fare worst here: the overall tense mood doesn't break enough to let Beethoven the warm melodist come through. On the whole, though, this box set tends to elevate the Beethoven piano trios to a new level of seriousness, with fine Zurich Radio studio sound from Sony.
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