A good long time ago I reviewed a set of Svetlanov performances of music by Medtner which included, almost as an afterthought, a few examples of compositions by Eduard Nápravnik. The Czech-born composer, like so many of his executant confrères, ended up in St Petersburg where the Russian Schools, an amalgam of native Russian, Czech and Hungarian teaching, thrived during the nineteenth-century and beyond.

Heinrich von Herzogenberg’s search for selfhood finally came to fruition in his two piano trios. After highly promising successes in his native Graz with large-format works modeled on Wagner, the talented young composer experienced a creative and existential crisis from which he first recovered when he turned to Johannes Brahms. The Vienna Piano Trio documents this artistic awakening with a top quality interpretation on SACD adding a new facet to the reception of Herzogenberg’s music after its sleeping beauty’s century of slumbering.

Johannes Brahms had decided that his composing days were over, but then the retiree met Richard Mühlfeld, the clarinetist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. Mühlfeld's playing so very much charmed the great composer that he once again put pencil to score paper - and did so again and again - and with magnificent results. Here the two Clarinet Sonatas and the equally marvelous Clarinet Trio are heard for the first time in high-resolution 3-D sound on Super Audio CD in performances by Robert Oberaigner and Michael Schöch - joined by Norbert Anger on the cello.

PREMIERE RECORDING An-lun Huang's piano trios dazzlingly demonstrate that contemporary music in no way has to be accessible only to a sworn community of experts. With his skill this Chinese-Canadian composer combines the best traditions from several world regions to produce a euphonious and harmonious whole - and does so with great class. The premiere ensemble for the Trio No. 2 from 2015 lends this first recording a special measure of authenticity. As a composer and as a teacher An-lin Huang is sought after throughout the world.

Unlike those of his elite fellow executant-composers such as Rode, Spohr, or Viotti, Molique’s violin concertos never really made it, whether as concert vehicles or as student practice works. His chamber music too was long ignored and it’s really only in recent years that labels have begun to explore it. CPO has been recording the quartets and now MDG turns to the piano trios in its first volume of a series.

Airy, transparent, light as a feather - if any composer’s music answers to these attributes, then it is that of Maurice Ravel, including his Piano Trio, even if this work too has its more serious moments. On its newest Super Audio CD the Vienna Piano Trio brings together this marvellously unique achievement and a very differently gripping trio by Ernest Chausson - a fascinating contrast and one most beautifully celebrated by our Vienna threesome.

Ferdinand Ries must have made a strong impression as a pianist. Beethoven, a gifted pianist in his own right, even entrusted the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 3 to Ries. The two had known each other since their days together in Bonn, when Riess parents took the half-orphan Ludwig into their family. Ries was Beethovens right-hand man in Vienna, and what he learned from his great model, who was fourteen years his senior, is impressively demonstrated by the Franz Ensemble on its debut album: brilliant virtuosity meets Classical form, and tradition appears in new guise for a very special anticipation of the 250th anniversary of Beethovens birth!

A brilliant start and now the sequel on Vol. 2 with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's complete basset horn trios in arrangements by Ulf-Guido Schafer for trio d'anches. From the twenty-five individual movements - in part of quite enigmatic transmission - Schafer has put together two more highly entertaining divertimentos. Deeply moving excerpts from Cosi fan tutte form a dramatic contrast to the serenade tone of the trios. The trio d'anches consisting of an oboe, a clarinet, and a bassoon is actually a creation of the twentieth century. French composers in particular felt inspired by the homogeneous sound of this ensemble not unlike the sound of the human singing voice.

What ensemble could be more predestined for Ludwig van Beethovens piano trios than the Vienna Piano Trio? Following its brilliant beginning with the Trios op. 70, this top ensemble from Vienna now presents the magnificent and mighty Archduke Trio op. 97 in surprisingly close album association with the standout Trio in C minor from op. 1, a work with trailblazing qualities that immediately caught Joseph Haydns attention. And with a beginning that must have immediately irritated listeners of those times: is that still the introduction or already the theme?

This fine CD is a thoughtful and very generous combination of three late-Romantic pieces: one well known (the Brahms), one less known (the Zemlinsky), and one (the Rabl) that appears to have its first ever recording here. All three pieces are served admirably by this remarkable ensemble, and also by sensitive high-quality engineering. While all three are excellent, I agree with the last reviewer that the Rabl stands out from the other two.

This is the second disc devoted by the Chinese-German Trio Parnassus to the chamber music of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the dedicatee of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. The prince was an aristocratic patron for whom the irascible Beethoven actually had musical respect, noting that he played not "in a princely or royal manner but rather like a competent piano player." Ferdinand, who was killed by Napoleon's troops in 1806, in turn venerated Beethoven, but the strongest tribute to his talent is that as a composer he wrote music that neither aped Beethoven's nor took refuge in Classical models.

These appear to be the only chamber works this pianist and teacher wrote (there are lots of piano pieces, songs and a comic opera) and their dates are uncertain. The sonata is simple and elegant with more than a touch of the salon in its slow movement but the 33-minute trio is more impressive, with a three-note motive in the first movement you'll swear you've known all your life, a light and Mendelssohnian scherzo, a slow movement with much more depth and an allegro con fuoco finale as advertised. Joanna Lawrynowicz (piano), Andrzej Gebski (violin), Andrzej Wróbel (cello).

This recording of the complete chamber music works for clarinet by Johannes Brahms is presented with first-rate interpreters: Laura Ruiz Ferreres, one of the most gifted clarinettists of her generation, and pianist Christoph Berner. Internationally renowned cellist Danjulo Ishizaka and the Mandelring Quartet complete the superb line-up of instrumentalists for this recording.

This performance of the Horn Trio Op 40 is my favorite of the moment. It is so lively and engaging that I had to give it my full attention on the first hearing; no multitasking while these musicians are playing. The trio and the Serenade Op 11 - the Serenade is the original nonet version - are emotionally charged, gritty (but not ugly at all) tangy and deeply satisfying. Well balanced recording and great sound.

The two sonatas for cello and piano along with the D minor Piano Trio were among the last works that Fauré was to complete before his death in 1924 at the ripe old age of 79. Despite the many dire circumstances that filled the latter years of Fauré's life, and in light of his choice to score each of these pieces in dark, minor keys, all three compositions have many moments of complete joy. The two cello sonatas are performed by cellist Christian Poltéra and pianist Kathryn Stott. Both artists have an impeccable sense of line and flow and are able to spin out the long, wandering phrases Fauré lays down.