Mithras Trio: Fountain of Youth

The Strad Issue: June 2026

Description: An inspired showcase of composerly precocity

Musicians: Mithras Trio

Works: Korngold: Trio op.1. Lisney: Petrichor. Shostakovich: Piano Trio no.1 op.8 ‘Poème’

Catalogue number: LINN RECORDS CKD781

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

The award-winning Mithras Trio offers an ingenious programme which focuses on early or first works. Shostakovich’s ‘Poème’ – his original title for this trio, written when he was 16 – exudes an edgy melodiousness in Romantically cast harmonies. You’d never guess that only two decades later, his style would embrace irony and lines of steely brutality. But at the time he was in love with a nurse who’d helped him recover from tuberculosis. Already though, the ideas are memorable, with notably brilliant part-writing and texturing, delivered with beautifully blended and well-characterised playing.

Cellist Joy Lisney’s trio Petrichor delves into the world of water – and explores our relationship with this life-giving element. High-pitched violin notes partner quasi-rain figures on the piano, with pizzicatos adding to the timbral effect. Sensitive and atmospheric playing maximises the clarity of writing, the opening material resurfacing in the finale, following a syncopated and restless middle movement.

The good and the great – from Richard Strauss to Mahler – were knocked sideways by Korngold’s stunningly precocious gifts. This op.1 Trio, written when he was 12, demonstrates just why. From the first notes of the opening motif, the ideas are vivid and distinctive, adorned with the sophistication of a late-Romantic musical language and scored with fluency and phenomenal brilliance. The Mithras Trio presents a compelling and idiomatic narrative, fusing intensity with winningly eloquent lyricism.

Joanne Talbot