Divine Art Records

Artist: Huberman Piano Trio

  • Rachmaninov: Suites for Two Pianos & Music for Piano Trio

    Rachmaninov: Suites for Two Pianos & Music for Piano Trio

    A new album of chamber works by Sergei Rachmaninov. This outstanding recording was made at two venues in Poland: the Łódź Academy of Music, and the Czestochowa Philharmony. The principal performer is pianist Barbara Karaśkiewicz who has made several highly praised recordings for Divine Art (and before that the esteemed Polish label Acte Preable). She performs two piano duos with her musical partner Michał Rot. The chamber works are played by the Huberman Piano Trio whose Divine Art recording of 20th Century Chamber music was also acclaimed by critics.

    Both the performances and the perfectly engineered recording offer a sumptuous program of Rachmaninov that will delight listeners.

    The Huberman Trio was formed at the initiative of Barbara Karaśkiewicz, named in honour of the great Polish artist Bronislav Huberman, famed for his performances and transcriptions of works by Chopin and others.

  • 20th Century Polish Chamber Music

    20th Century Polish Chamber Music

    Three works by Polish composers of great stature: the music of Karol Szymanowski is now very well known; he was responsible for the first real flowering of Polish music after Chopin, developing from the Romantic to expressionism to modernism. His Op. 9 violin sonata is his earliest chamber composition, written when he was 22 and found immediate success with audiences, if not all of the critics at the time.

    The Piano Trio of Andrzej Panufnik, who later became a British citizen, is also an early work and as his Op. 1 (he did not give opus numbers to any other composition) symbolises the beginning of his great career. Elements of modernism, Romanticism and jazz inspire this superb piece. It is heard here in the composer’s revised version from 1977.

    For Grażyna Bacewicz, chamber music played a very important role alongside concert works; she summed up the 200 year era from Chopin to Rachmaninoff as a great virtuoso composer and performer – on both violin and piano. The fourth piano sonata is generally considered her greatest – described by one critic as ‘contemporary Brahms’.

    The members of the Huberman Trio, based in Czestochowa, Poland, are all first class musicians with successful solo and orchestral careers:
    Magadalena Ziarkowska-Kołacka (violin);
    Sergei Rysanov (cello); Barbara Karaśkiewicz (piano)

    Chosen by Peter Burwasser of Fanfare in his 2021 Want List (top 5 albums of the year)