Analog Planet Rated 10/10 Music, 10/10 Sonics!This crack ensemble was in its matutinal hours during this performance, but it remains a treat to listen to this recording. Yarlung, you could even say, with this LP has hit a hole in one. Janaki String Trio's Young Beethoven  Is Musical and Sonic Gold  "...reminiscent of RCA Living Stereo in its golden age, or Mercury Records at its height. Yarlung's sound is liquid and transparent, just as if you were sitting in the concert halls with superb acoustics, where these recordings are made." — Mori Shima, Stereo Sound, Japan

A sonic and technical tour-de-force
The recording transports me into the venue. My listening room dimensions do not define the soundstage. I hear the space the musicians are occupying in the hall. Low-level information and detail are presented on a background alive with reverberant cues. I 'feel' the space. The LP, pressed by Pallas in Germany, is totally silent in replay. No clicks, no pops thru an entire side providing the foundation for the extreme transparency. The musicians play 'within themselves' combining discipline and technical mastery into a cohesive interpretation rich in tonal color, textures, and image specificity. 

Happy 250th Birthday Beethoven! Your music sounds fresh, exciting and inspiring as it must have when you were alive and writing it in your young prime. Amazing to have created this magnificent trio when you were only 27 years old.

 

Beethoven's Trios -- he wrote four in all -- are early works, but already in the C Minor work on this LP the tread of the dramatic master is apparent. Just the opening, a dark, menacing melody that shows up again in the great Opus 131 Quartet of many years later, tells us that. C Minor was Beethoven's most dramatic tonality throughout his lifetime; even though this early trio tends to slither into happier C Major tones rather readily, the dark shadows are never completely out of earshot. - Alan Rich

 

Janaki String Trio "won the Coleman Chamber Music Competition and the Concert Artists Guild International Competition." And writing about Janaki's Carnegie debut, Allan Kozinn wrote the Janaki musicians were "fresh and energetic in Beethoven's Trio." - Allan Kozinn, New York Times

 

This music sounds fresh and energizing just as it must have for Beethoven and his first lucky audiences.

Even Beethoven, who liked to take occasional shots at the performers of his works by noting that they were mere drones expressing his genius, might have been impressed by the rich and warm and transparent sound of this album, one that is pretty much guaranteed to satisfy all but the most curmudgeonly of listeners. To paraphrase the venerable Dr. Johnson, if you're tired of this music, then you're tired of life.

 

Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman & Bob Attiyeh

45rpm vinyl mastering by Bernie Grundman

Made in Germany

 

Musicians

Serena McKinney violin

Katie Kadarauch viola

Arnold Choi cello

 

Selections

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

STRING TRIO IN C MINOR OPUS 9, NO. 3

I. Allegro con spirito

II. Adagio con espressione

III. Scherzo - Allegro molto e vivace

IV. Finale - Presto