Wiener Schubert Trio

Claus-Christian Schuster (Piano)
Boris Kuschnir (Violin)
Mar­tin Horn­stein (Cello)

…they inter­act with a fond­ness that transends into pro­fes­sional…
…there was a spon­taneity to the play­ing that is as cap­tiv­at­ing as it is rare…
New York Times

The Vienna Schubert Trio was foun­ded in 1985 and per­formed as a full-time ensemble until decid­ing to dis­band in 1993. From the out­set the trio appeared reg­u­larly in the music centres of Europe, North Amer­ica and Asia, and rap­idly estab­lished a repu­ta­tion as one of the fore­most piano trios.

In its debut sea­son, they won first prize at the Inter­na­tional Cham­ber Music Com­pet­i­tion “Ser­gio Lorenzi” in Trieste, Italy with Sandor Vegh as pres­id­ent of the jury, and as a res­ult were given the oppor­tun­ity to work with the Beaux Arts Trio. After its first tour of the United States in 1986, the Trio was named the year’s “Best New Vis­it­ing Cham­ber Ensemble” by the Wash­ing­ton Post. Sub­sequent sea­sons took the Trio to the music fest­ivals of Vienna, Ossipach, Brat­is­lava, Stresa, Spo­leto, Napoli, Bes­ancon, La Chaise-Dieu, Guanajuato and Wash­ing­ton. In 1986 they gave a series of four con­certs at the Wig­more Hall, Lon­don, in 1987 they toured Japan, and in 1988 the ensemble made its first appear­ance at the Salzburg and Turku Fest­ivals. Begin­ning in 1988 the Vienna Schubert Trio presen­ted its own annual series of five con­certs at the Musik­ver­ein in Vienna. It first per­formed at the Phil­har­monie in Ber­lin, and at Svi­atoslav Richter’s pres­ti­gi­ous “Decem­ber Fest­ival” in Moscow in 1990.

The ensemble devoted itself to both the estab­lished mas­ter­pieces of the rep­er­toire and many less famil­iar works, often presen­ted in the con­text of con­cert series designed to demon­strate rela­tion­ships between vari­ous com­posers and styles. In one sea­son the trio focussed on music writ­ten around the turn-of-the-century, per­form­ing trios by Lili Boulanger, Ern­est Chaus­son, Paul Juon, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger and Phil­ipp Schar­wenka along­side works of Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Shos­takovich and Tchaikovsky.

On the occa­sion of the 75^th anniversary of the Vienna Moz­art Soci­ety, the Vienna Schubert Trio was awar­ded the Moz­art Inter­pret­a­tion Prize and shortly there­after recor­ded the com­plete Moz­art Piano Trios for EMI.

The string play­ers of the Vienna Schubert Trio per­formed on import­ant his­toric instru­ments from the col­lec­tion of the Aus­trian National Bank. The violin is a 1698 Stra­di­varius, “La Rouse-Boughton”; the cello is a 1743 Guadagn­ini, “ex van Zweygberg”.

Reviews

CD-Review in Strad Magazine (March 2012)

Videos

Pho­tos

Images of the Wiener Schubert Trio
Album Cov­ers of the Wiener Schubert Trio