Profile—Trio Wanderer: The Wandering Spirits
The members of the Trio Wanderer on ensemble performance, playing for the long haul, and freeing your inner chamber player
Chamber-music ensembles can begin life in different ways. In some cases, a musician decides to form a group and then searches for colleagues, but more often a group finds itself playing together and decides to make the partnership permanent. Twenty years ago, violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, cellist Raphäel Pidoux, and pianist Vincent Coq took the latter course when, as students at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, they were asked by a teacher to play a piano trio for a master class. The results were so promising that he suggested they continue, and so the Trio Wanderer was born.
The trio’s name is a tribute to the works of Schubert that epitomize the German Romantic period during which the piano trio, as a form, came to maturity. It also reflects the group’s musical journeys across the whole history of that form, from Mozart and Haydn to the present day. But how, with such a wide repertoire, does it maintain a distinct identity?
After an April 11 lunchtime concert of Beethoven’s Piano Trio in Bb, Op. 11, and Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 in B, Op. 8, at London’s Wigmore Hall, I ask its three members the simple question: What does the Trio Wanderer do?
“It does everything!” violinist Phillips-Varjabédian replies immediately with a laugh.
Pianist Coq adds, “It’s up to every musician to choose what he plays. But it’s interesting to go everywhere in the repertoire because, despite how musicologists define different ‘periods,’ there are always connections between composers and their styles. And contemporary music is important in order to make music live for the future.”
More pragmatically, cellist Pidoux explains that the piano trio repertoire is much smaller than that for string quartet, “so we automatically play all the best pieces, like Ravel, Beethoven, and Haydn.”
The trio also enjoys the flexibility of temporarily losing a member (its latest CD includes duo works by Liszt for violin and piano, and cello and piano) or adding a violist, clarinettist, or singer.
Of the trio’s most recent CD, this year’s Smetana Piano Trios/Liszt Elegies (Harmonia Mundi), James Manheim of the All Music Guide opined: “The emphasis on the idea of elegy illuminates both Liszt and Smetana and reveals a largely ignored connection: one of the few champions of the Smetana trio when it appeared in the 1850s was none other than Franz Liszt. . . . Superb, groundbreaking, and quite moving music-making.”
During the recent Wigmore Hall concert, I’d been surprised by the lack of visual interaction between the members of the trio, even allowing for the fact that the string players were sitting with their backs to the piano. But Pidoux explains that, after 20 years together, “Eyes are not important.”
Indeed, the three musicians have become a kind of a family. And since all families have disagreements, I ask how they manage conflict. “We do fight—more and more,” Pidoux says. “But it’s healthy fighting, because the disagreements are about music. Very often, the pianist has the main part, so we tend to follow him, but sometimes he wants to speed up when I want the cello to sing. But this is good for us because we learn from each other.”
The result is a vibrant performance style that has been described as “physical” (Le Monde) and “edge of your seat” (New York Times).
In fact, this dance works more often than not: The Strad has marvelled at what the British music magazine called Trio Wanderer’s “near-telepathic musical sensibility.”
Phillips-Varjabédian confirms that a feeling of fraternity allows them to argue constructively. But he admits that the members can appear rude when talking to each other—particularly in rehearsal, when time is at a premium. “In French, it can sound very rude!” he asserts. “But we don’t need to be polite—we can go straight to the point. Sometimes we don’t even need to use words. For example, the use of vibrato or legato is very important because it can change the meaning of a phrase, but we don’t need to talk about it—we can just change it.
“As Raphäel says, what’s important in the life of any chamber ensemble is that the fighting doesn’t take place outside the music. He’s sometimes rude about my phrasing or rubato, but I don’t mind because I know it’s not personal. Five minutes later, it’s forgotten.
“Our common goal is the life of the trio and all the music we’re going to play together.”
“I always say that a piano trio is like the Holy Trinity,” Coq concludes. “Three individuals play in an ensemble, but the individuals are as important as the ensemble. If there’s a lack of individuality, if there’s only ensemble, something’s missing. Sometimes you have to let the others speak, sometimes you have to speak together. So you have to understand what’s written in the score.
“This is the most difficult thing, and everything comes after it.’
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