Austria's
Eggner Trio -- Georg, Florian, and Christoph Eggner -- have concertized widely in mainstream repertoire. Here it presents three contemporary commissioned works, none of which is short on the usual accessibility. By Central European standards, it's a crowd-pleaser of a contemporary disc, with a general orientation toward tonal reference points. The title
Kaleidoskop is appropriate, not only for the program as a whole, but for the individual works. All three seem to cycle through a variety of styles, but maintain an overall coherence. Gerrit Wunder's Sequentia Miraculi reflects the composer's background in film music with its four episodic movements, each evoking a different preexisting style.
Johannes Berauer's Piano Trio No. 1 has hints of jazz, while the Seven Preludes with Prologue and Epilogue of Sascha Peres resemble
Shostakovich in his more neo-classic moods and have similar shifts of tonal content between limpid Bachian melodies and spikier, more dissonant trio sounds. The Peres work also contains a bit of a jazz inflection. The
Eggner Trio has lived with all these works since its inception and has managed to solicit commissions distinctively suited to its talents. This music from Vienna, with excellent studio sound, is recommended for anyone wanting to hear what's new in that most musical of all cities.