Press

Concerts reviews: 

 

“The excellence of the musicians is not in doubt in the last part, as is the salutary simplicity of a vocal approach that one could almost believe to be natural.”
Bertrand Bolognesi, Anaclase

Festival de la Grange de Meslay, June 2023 with Raquel Camarinha, Yoan Héreau, Raphaël Sévère and Matteo Cesari

“Each of the three soloists present tonight has a personality and an assertive character, forming a balanced musical group. From the very first notes, one notices Paloma Kouider’s splendid piano, superbly detached notes in the arpeggios and a great mastery and variety of nuances, which already form a solid backbone of the trio. The two string soloists are impeccable in their musical precision and virtuosity.”

Classique en Provence, Festival de Pâques d’Aix-en-Provence, April 7th 2021

 

” The three French musicians achieve a captivating and sorough interpretation of these contrasting pieces, between desperate melancholy and débridée unbridled joy of life.”

Rhein-Main-Magazin, March 2020

 

“Through the almost feverish intensity of their playing, the three musicians stir up a powerful emotional resonance that becomes exultant.

the richness of their sound and the ardour with which they play made for a thrilling experience

My hope now is that the Karénine will soon be back in our City; their passion and artistry will always be welcome.”

Link to Oberon’s Glove (blog)

New York, Frick Collection review (USA), 20th January 2019

 

” Trio Karénine offers impressive chamber music performance.”

John Shulson for the VaGazette, 15th January 2019, Williamsburg VA (USA)

 

« Trio Karénine shares timeless Classical Chamber music at the Chrysler Museum (…) The group was stirring and fantastical (…)  A strong performance of chamber music that is easy to love and enjoy »

WHRO.org, Rebecca Evans, 14th January 2019, Norfolk VA (USA), Chrysler Museum

 

 

“Chants de l’Isolé” album Press review

 

“(…) These works obviously require a highly refined and subtle approach. This is the case with the magnificent Trio Karénine and the Orchestre de chambre de Wallonie conducted by Vahan Mardirossian, who is establishing himself today as a conductor of the first rank.”

Jacques Bonnaure, Classica, December 2023

 

Diapason d’Or
(…) The Karénine Trio and the orchestral ensemble, superbly serving a writing full of transparencies, find just the right expressive tone to make these sensitive universes speak with fluidity and precision, drawing on words without superfluous pathos”.

Anne Ibos-Augé, Diapason, November 2023

 

Suk / Dvorak album Press review

 

“Bravo to the Trio Karénine who, in the space of a few bars, have captivated us with their feverish vision of Suk’s Trio (…) It vibrates and declaims with tragic intensity without any overflow threatening the balance of the voices”.

Jérémie Cahen, Classica, 5 stars

 

“The Karénine Trio puts its virtuosity and sincerity at the service of the young Suk and the accomplished Dvorak.

Sophie Bourdais, Télérama

 

“(…) Demanding, sensitive and elegant, all the music lovers who have come to hear the Karénine Trio recognise a fluidity of playing combined with a total willingness to take risks. (…) A total success. A colourful album that extends the musical quality already seen in the Schumann trio (2016), the Germaine Tailleferre trio with Ravel and Fauré (2018) and this disc of Eastern European music (2019), all of which have won international awards.”

Jean-Rémi Barland, La Provence

 

Liszt / Schumann / Schönberg album Press review

 

“Le brio Karénine” CHOC Classica”

“In this repertoire that a hasty judgment could qualify as “marginal”, Trio Karénine shows itself worthy of the Tolstoyan heroine to whom it owes its name: passionate and engaging”.

Jérémie Bigorie, Classica, April 2021

 

“Revealed in 2016 with a Schumann album, the Karénine Trio has accustomed us to clever and rare rapprochements. After Fauré-Ravel-Tailleferre and then Weinberg-Dvorak-Chostakovitch, here is a new original exploration of the repertoire. In Tristia, they underline the audacious modulations, the dissonant harmonies, the lyrical quiverings drawn from his Obermann Valley by an inspired Liszt. The same cannot be said of the melancholic Schumann Etudes op 56, intended for the pedal piano, whose skillful transcription by Theodor Kirchner and the colorful, lively interpretation of the Trio Karénine soften the fierce austerity.

Transcribing the Transfigured Night is a perilous challenge (…) It is Steuermann’s art to have largely avoided this pitfall, and the art of Trio Karénine to make us forget for a moment the splendors of Hollywood, Juilliard and LaSalle quartets, in order to restore in a completely different light the subtlety of the inflections, the refinement of the colors and the dramatic intensity of the original. ”

Patrick Szernovicz, Diapason, April 2021

 

“Its finesse and imagination allow the Karenine trio to draw from its own palette in order to tame a repertoire that is not its own.”

Pianist, April 2021

 

“With piano trio transcriptions of Liszt’s Tristia, Schoenberg’s Verklärter Nacht and Schumann’s Sechs Canonische Studien, Trio Karénine takes us into new worlds of sound. This begins with a gripping and thoughtful interpretation of Liszt’s Tristia.
Unadorned, sharp, on the upper edge of expressive playing, this is how Schoenberg’s sextet Verklärte Nacht sounds in this most exciting version for string trio by Eduard Steuermann. The Karénine musicians convey the music’s emotional characteristics with all their abruptness, tension build-up and release, with explosions of concentrated power and dramatic sequences which at the end merge into perfect calm and idyllic beauty. The music is thus emotionally exhausted without technical ifs and buts, extremes are realized in dynamics and sound volume.
With the same intensity the Trio Karénine plays Schumann’s 6 Canonical Etudes op. 56 in the transcription by Theodor Kirchner.”

Remy Franck, Pizzicato, March 2021

 

“The Trio Karénine, perhaps the world’s best piano trio at the moment, consistently continues the path they have already taken on recordings with Ravel, Fauré, Tailleferre, Dvořák, Shostakovich, Weinberg and Schumann with this album. In doing so, the bracket between the 19th century and the early 20th century is important to them programmatically. The trio practices a technically mature style, which always has something improvisationally spontaneous in its emotional condensation. One reason why the three fabulous musicians like these arrangements so much is probably that they are noticeably concerned with the quintessence of the musical statement, the atomic core of the composition. As is well known, with sufficient enrichment, this is also the basis of enormous (explosive) forces, which, translated into the interpretation, means a freshness that sprouts like a young plant and a sonically eruptive force of nature. To this is added a sensuously singing tone of the strings and the stupendous virtuosity of Paloma Kouider on the grand piano. In terms of chamber music, spring cannot be celebrated more fruitfully.”

Dr. Ingobert Waltenberger, OnlineMerker, March 2021

 

 

Chostakovitch / Weinberg / Dvorak album Press review :

 

“Three young French musicians (…) have won prizes. With good reason. If one dares to name one development of the ensemble, it is probably an even greater stylistic certainty and an unwavering determination, idealisation and individualisation of expression. Incredibly virtuosic and technically sovereign are these three anyway.“

Das Orchester, May 2020

 

“This time it is a master stroke, as the interpreters surprise us by their capacity to admirably diversify the atmosphere : both sensitive and delicate in soothed parts, more lively then in contrast, they are always serving a very accurate and narrative rhetoric. 

Trio Karénine seduces us all the way by their intelligible playing and their colors, always enhanced by the sound recording – the whole thing within a well-balanced reading between darkness and clarity. A major record.”

Florent Coudeyrat, concerto.net, April 2020

 

Fauré / Tailleferre / Ravel album Press review : 

 

“(…) a very fine work by a band that takes an original look at well-known pages and reveals a rare prize.”

Jacques Bonnaure, Classica, June 2018

 

(…) Ravel’s Trio in A minor is one of the absolute masterpieces of its kind in the 20th century, and could not be missing from this French recording. There are interpretations that possess the rare privilege of conferring a new flavor on the most hackneyed works. Such is the case with the Karénine Trio’s performance, which reveals every facet of the score with as much intelligent mastery as it does wonder. This wonderment becomes that of the listener, dazzled and touched by so much artistry and, above all, naturalness.
The Trio by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983), a four-movement composition begun in 1917 and not completed until … 1978 ! The result is lively, tasty and deeply engaging, oscillating between the tender and the variegated, and deserves to be discovered, all the more so as the instrumentalists at work here do it justice with freshness and frankness.”

Alain Cochard, concertclassic.com, June 2018

 

 

Schumann album Press review :

 

“Recordings of the Schumann D minor Trio have lately appeared at the rate of almost one a year. Of these, the finest is perhaps the disc debut of the Parisian Trio Karénine, who marry impetuosity in the opening movement with focused beauty of tone in the Langsam. Their scherzo goes at a good clip and they are sunnily relaxed in a finale which they are not tempted, like some others, to sound manic.”

David Threasher, Gramophone Magazine, April, 2023

 

“The Trio Karénine were joint winners of the 2013 ARD Competition in Munich. They formed as recently as 2009 and the choice of Schumann for their first disc is a bold one. There’s an effervescence and lightness that underpins their approach (not for nothing are they named after Tolstoy’s heroine Anna Karenina, « for the life force she represents »).

The Second Trio suits them particularly well; They capture the upward-surging opening of the first movement and the thrilling élan of its close. Yet they don’t underplay the contrasting elements either, for instance, the confiding theme introduced by the piano at 0’50’’ (tr 5). (…) The lolling intermezzo-like third movement, with its canonic conversation between strings and piano, is also very effective while the finale is a particularly elated affair, the Karénine palpably delighting in Schumann’s flow of melodic invention;

The turbulent First Trio is also full of good things. (…) the new group convey the energy of the finale with great immediacy, combining a sens of freshness with deep-seated understanding of Schumann’s world. A most impressive debut. “

Gramophone Mag, Harriet Smith, June 2016

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