The music of German composer Johann Peter Pixis has been largely forgotten, and he is remembered, if at all, for a possibly salacious episode involving the young Chopin during his first years in western Europe, and as the dedicatee of Chopin's Grand Duo Concertant. (The tale is questioned by annotator Jeremy Nicholas.) Leonore Piano Trio sets out to revive his music and has some success; its performances here catch the large, public flavor of these trios, which incline toward Hummel above all. The Grand Piano Trio No. 1 in ...
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The music of German composer Johann Peter Pixis has been largely forgotten, and he is remembered, if at all, for a possibly salacious episode involving the young Chopin during his first years in western Europe, and as the dedicatee of Chopin's Grand Duo Concertant. (The tale is questioned by annotator Jeremy Nicholas.) Leonore Piano Trio sets out to revive his music and has some success; its performances here catch the large, public flavor of these trios, which incline toward Hummel above all. The Grand Piano Trio No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 75, in fact, is dedicated to Hummel and in the outer movements has the spacious design of some of Hummel's chamber works. Its strongest movement, however, is the artless central Andante con moto, which could easily have been by Schubert and moreover, was in all likelihood written with no prior knowledge of that composer; Pixis spent much of the 1820s in Paris. It is marked as being based on a theme in an unknown opera by Pixis. The four-movement Piano Trio No. 3 in...
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