Our first concert of the new BCMS season begins where chamber music itself began, with music written for private enjoyment by the smallest number of players of different instruments from the same family. More than any other ensemble the string trio, as created and perfected by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, places the viola in an equal space between the violin and cello. Mozart’s seminal Trio Divertimento in E-flat, performed last December by BCMS, and Beethoven’s admiring response (coming up next January 16) spring from the same source of all the music heard in this opening concert: the imagination and artistry of Franz Joseph Haydn. Haydn is literally the father of our country. His dates are the same as George Washington’s (1732-1809). This year we acknowledge the 200th year since his passing.
Mozart and Beethoven each studied with Haydn and learned to adapt his models and principals to their needs. As an intimate associate, Schubert was considered by Beethoven to be his spiritual heir. Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert were each known to have played the viola. Perhaps this is why they each crafted supreme examples of the string trio. However, beside towering achievements in song, symphony, string quartet, and sonata, even the greatest of string trios can seem insignificant. Schubert’s Trio in B-flat, D.581b, the improved version of the second one he started in that key, is one of the least performed chamber works of any master. It’s opening has a number of gestural similarities to the Mozart and Beethoven trios, and has often had to compete with them for a place on a program.
Mozart’s six-movement Trio Divertimento begin with a slow, downward tracing of the E-flat major chord in hushed octaves that break into harmony to finish the phrase. Suddenly there is a succession of brilliant scales in each successive part. The last of these scales, played by the cello, leaps up a seventh to form the bottom of an ominous sounding diminished triad that is resolved step by step back to E-flat by a series of light jumps in the following measures. The opening is arresting both in its quiet and in its outbursts punctuated by silences.
Clip: Mozart Divertimento in E-flat, K.563, Movement 1, opening
By contrast, or more likely in contravention, Beethoven’s Trio in E-flat, also in six movements, opens con brio with full chords jostling against the beat in syncopation, shaking the fist at the heavens, before playing quiet ascending triads in quick succession, each separated by questioning silences.
Clip: Beethoven Trio in E-flat, Op. 3, Movement 1, opening
The opening phrases of Schubert’s four-movement trio suggest that he knew both pieces. They are also poised around silences, each introduced by embellished arpreggios. There is even one that traces the upward leap of a seventh we find in the Mozart. Only here it is in the viola part. This leap to the same harmonic Gordian knot is resolved with light skips, just as Mozart did, only with more melodic elaboration.
Clip: Schubert Trio in B-flat, D. 581, Movement 1, opening
Generally speaking throughout Schubert’s music we are accustomed to hearing generous and genial melody with simple accompaniment, lots of repetition of sections within large-scale forms, and on the local level, into which subtle changes of note and rhythm are introduced. This opening, with its greater focus on the violin and more intense use of melodic embellishment is typical of what we will hear throughout the piece. Even as a young composer of twenty, working on the small scale, Schubert shows that he can use repetition and the introduction of the smallest elements to great emotional effect.
One such poignant moment comes in the middle of the second movement marked Andante, where the cello alone repeats a low phrase that is soon overlaid with a descant played by the viola. The violin soon takes up the descant in the register below the viola as if to emphasize the darkness of the moment.
Clip: Schubert Trio in B-flat, D. 581, Movement 2, measure 18
If that cello phrase seems familiar, it may be because we are used to hearing it in a completely different register and at one of the most sublime moments in all of Music.
Clip: Mozart Magic Flute
The music and that phrase are from the moment when Prince Tamino and Princess Pamina are first allowed to speak to each other, after he has completed his trials with the aid of the Magic Flute. In the Schubert the phrase appears in a low register in minor and wanders into the most expressive section of the whole piece before returning to the Andante theme. The words Mozart set to this phrase that Schubert later chose to adapt in this trio speak for themselves, and for why we turn to music.
“We wander by sweet music’s might
With gladness through the vale of night.”
John Harbison’s Piano Trio No. 2, composed in 2003 for the Amelia Trio, and commissioned through funds from Joan and Irving Harris, the Caramoor International Music Festival, the Simonds Foundation, Tom and Vivian Waldeck, and Judy Evnin, will have its first Boston performance at the center of our first concert. In his notes for the piece the composer writes:
“The most exploratory, diverse body of music for this combination –not its sonority and virtuosity but its ability to adjust to an infinity of formal designs and strange notions- is by Joseph Haydn. At our Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, while presenting only seven of the twenty or so masterpieces he made for piano, violin, and cello, we noticed how much more unpredictable, experimental, and speculative they are than his more more presentational, public quartets and symphonies. Intimate news-filled letters from Haydn to the performers, who then pass on their secrets, intimations of immortality and jokes to whatever listeners are ready, his trios suspend expectation, live in the moment. As long or as short as they need to be, they encourage us to listen without assumptions.
It was not until I heard my Trio No. 2 in performance that I realized how marked I had been very regular contact with Haydn’s Trios. My trio makes little contact with the Mozart-to-Shostakovitch central trio repertoire, and a great deal of the transparency, ambiguity, and shiftiness of Papa Joseph Haydn. He had the Joker in his pack, also the Ace of Spades: he could entertain, reassure, and frighten, all in one piece, and his aesthetic, at least, is still available.”
John Harbison recently spoke further about his Trio No. 2 in conversation with Andrew Watts, a composition student from the New England Conservatory of Music.
The piano quartet, viola plus piano trio, or in the case of the Brahms A major—string trio plus piano, was probably first assembled by Mozart in response to a commission for four new works in that format. After viewing the scores of the first two, the publisher cancelled the rest because he felt the piano parts too difficult for home use. Perhaps he was right. They are still difficult for their intended use. The format later attracted the attention of the young Felix Mendelssohn, whose virtuosic f minor piano quartet, written for home use, opens our next concert, and the young Brahms whose first piano quartet Op. 25 in G minor brought our last season and summer series to an exciting close.
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 26 is received today as the more noble of the two, and is often cited as evidence of the renewed popularity of Schubert’s music in 1850’s Vienna. What the piano quartet makes possible that the piano trio does not is the ability to write antiphonal or echoing passages for a fully-voiced string ensemble in contrast to the piano. That is how Op. 26 begins: with the piano playing a chordal phrase that is immediately echoed by the three strings without the piano. The close and nearly literal repetition of the phrase confirms that Brahms fully recognized and wanted to explore the difference in sonority one viola can make.
Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 1, opening
This dialogue of sonorities will be heard throughout the first movement and the rest of the piece. In the Andante Brahms introduces a completely new set of sonorities and contrasts byopening with a piano theme accompanied by muted strings. He even mutes the piano by specifying the use of the una corda pedal, the one in clutch position, that causes the piano hammers to strike fewer strings.
Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 2, opening
Perhaps the moment of greatest contrast and revelation comes when the ‘veil is lifted’ and the strings and piano are allowed to play the return of the opening theme without mutes.
Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 2, without mute
At the opening of the third movement, Scherzo, the strings play the theme in double octaves while the piano rests, then answers with the same melody also in octaves, but with a sparse string accompaniment.
Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 3, opening
One of the most thrilling contests between the two sonorities takes place in the Trio. The piano part leaps into a melody in a dramatic series of octaves we might expect to hear in a concerto. These are followed closely in canon by all the strings.
Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 3, trio
To more than a few listeners this idea of playing a D minor Trio melody in octaves and canon is a clear reference to Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Witch’s Round” from his string quartet, Op. 76, No. 2, Hob.III:76, also known as the “Fifths.”
Clip: Haydn Quartet in d, Hob.III:76, Movement 3, opening
That entire Haydn String Quartet may be heard at the opening of our last concert of the BCMS series next May.
The Finale of the Op. 26 Piano Quartet is just as Hungarian in character as the Finale of the first piano quartet, but rather as Schubert might have imagined it. Here is Schubert’s Hungarian accent followed by the opening Brahms’ finale:
Clip: Schubert Rondo brillant in b, D.895
Clip: Brahms Quaret in A, Op. 26, Movement 4
Enjoy the concert!!
Marcus
Comment from Mary Jaffee
Time October 14, 2009 at 8:37 am
Thanks for the wonderful information connecting these familiar works with their heritage.