Mozart's piano trios don't represent a generically unified group as much as do, say his string quartets. The cover of this disc by the British-Swedish Kungsbacka Trio gives part of the story: it doesn't remake the Divertimento in B flat major, K. 254, into a "piano trio," but it doesn't recognize that the Piano Trio in G major, K. 496, is also an ambiguous case; Mozart tried to sell it as a "Terzett" but entitled it a "Sonata" in his autograph, to which someone else affixed a notation calling the work a trio for piano, ...
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Mozart's piano trios don't represent a generically unified group as much as do, say his string quartets. The cover of this disc by the British-Swedish Kungsbacka Trio gives part of the story: it doesn't remake the Divertimento in B flat major, K. 254, into a "piano trio," but it doesn't recognize that the Piano Trio in G major, K. 496, is also an ambiguous case; Mozart tried to sell it as a "Terzett" but entitled it a "Sonata" in his autograph, to which someone else affixed a notation calling the work a trio for piano, violin, and cello. The final Piano Trio in B flat major, K. 502, shows the trio definitively taking shape as an independent genre. The upshot of this evolution is to place the focus on the pianist, who is both the leader of the group (even in the K. 502 trio) and responsible for bringing out the other instruments where they have important parts to play. The Kungsbacka Trio (named after a Swedish town where they operate a music festival) delivers lively performances, on modern...
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