Download PROGRAM NOTES by SUSAN HALPERN © 2015 Trio for Piano

PROGRAM NOTES by SUSAN HALPERN © 2015
Trio for Piano, Flute and Cello, H. XV: 15. . . Joseph Haydn
(Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna)
In the 1790’s, Haydn wrote seventeen splendid piano trios, twelve of which were published in four
sets of three, each set dedicated to a woman whose talents are probably reflected in the piano parts.
Even this late in the eighteenth century, the distinctive quality of what we call chamber music was
not necessarily in the writing, nor in obligatory equality among the parts, although parity had been
coming for some time. The important defining characteristic was functional, perhaps social, and not
musical. Almost all chamber music was written for private performance and for the pleasure of the
performers. It was private, not public, music. Composers tailored their works to the tastes and skills
of specific players, and the elaborate dedications that often accompanied them were not meaningful
testaments to patrons or friends.
This trio was first published in 1790, written for John Bland’s series Le Tout Ensemble.
It is one of the two trios Haydn wrote for piano, flute and cello. Haydn had begun his attempts to
liberate the strings from their conventional function of “accompanying” the keyboard instrument.
Instead of the violin Haydn wrote for the flute as the descant instrument, yet the substitution of a
violin instead of a wind instrument is possible and Haydn, a good businessman, was willing for the
violin to be used as an alternate. Nevertheless, since Haydn adjusted himself to writing for the flute,
the flute best captures the character of the music. The cello, in a role inherited from the trio sonata
of the Baroque era, basically concentrates on a harmonic bass line. The cello plays along with the
piano left hand, a gesture perhaps necessary because of the relatively weak bass register of the pianos
of the time. The work was scored originally for fortepiano, a forerunner of today’s piano, although
at the time of the composition of this work, the piano part was generally played on a harpsichord.
The trio was later republished in the usual piano-trio instrumentation due to the large demand for
piano trios at that time. All young girls learned the piano and the piano trios written during Haydn’s
lifetime were less demanding than string quartets. The composers were more concerned with making
an agreeable sound that could be achieved by amateurs and thus the works were fairly loosely
constructed. In chamber works with piano it was difficult to achieve a good balance of voices
because the instruments had widely differing sound quality. Usually, the result was that the piano
was dominant despite attempts to strengthen the role of the other instruments.
This work is very relaxed Haydn with no special surprises in the trio form. There are three
movements in a fast slow fast sequence. Wit and variety of mood are its general characteristics. In
the first movement, the flute part develops the theme from the beginning and the piano plays an
accompanying part. In the Andante, there is a true dialogue between the flute and the piano but the
cello has not been freed from its subsidiary role, and still closely follows the bass line of the piano. In
the third movement, Allegro moderato, a four measure rising theme appears in sequence form and
there are also some recitative like passages.
Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano. . . Bohuslav Martinu
(Born December 8, 1890 in Policka, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic); died August 28, 1959, in
Liestal, Switzerland)
The composer Bohuslav Martinu has been called one of the outstanding Czech composers of the
20th century. He took violin lessons as a child and began composing when he was only ten years old.
Later, he completed his studies at the Prague Conservatory. For ten years, Martinu was a member of
the Czech Philharmonic, whose conductor encouraged his aspirations as a composer. He made his
home in Paris from 1923, when he won a scholarship to study with the composer Roussel until the
Nazis overran France in 1940. He remained in Paris for seventeen years, but Martinu developed an
interest in the music of his homeland and became a nationalistic composer. His work during this
period combined Surrealism, Impressionism, and even Jazz, demonstrating the influence of
Stravinsky. His music is marked by simplicity, directness and clarity, as well as a rhythmic drive both
athletic and vivacious. Martinu's best works show a unique blend of East European melodic and
rhythmic idioms with a precise sense of delicate instrumental color.
From 1941 to 1953, he lived in the United States, was invited to teach at Tanglewood and at
Princeton University (the latter from 1948 from 1953), and then he returned to France for two years.
When he came back to the United States in 1955, he taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia,
and in 1956, he returned to Europe again to teach at the American Academy in Rome. Martinu lived
a simple life while he was in the United States, unburdened by possessions, but at times barely above
the level of poverty. He spent his last years in Switzerland.
He composed the carefree sounding Trio in the United States in 1944, in swift fashion in the last five
days of July. It was commissioned by the French flutist and composer René Le Roy, and premiered
in February 1945. It is possible to detect some American influences in the trio’s music fabric.
This three-movement brisk work, rarely performed today, is particularly notable for its tone color.
Virgil Thomson described it as “a gem of bright sound and cheerful sentiment.” The spirited opening
movement, Poco Allegretto, has a lively French neo-classic feel with hints of Czech folk music,
replete with rich harmonies and a brilliant sounding counterpoint.
The second movement, an Adagio, is calm and meditative. It is melodic and beautiful, beginning with
a contemplative piano statement responded to by the flute and cello. It has an expressive climax, an
intensification of the original theme. In this movement Czech folk modes are used.
The final movement, begins Andante with a remarkable flute solo characterized by lovely
ornamentation, and then quickens to a lively Allegretto scherzando, when the other two instruments
join in a series of rondo-like episodes that alternate in tempi, texture and mood.
Piano Trio No. 2, for Violin, Cello and Piano in C minor, Op. 66 . . . Felix Mendelssohn
(Born February 3, 1809, in Hamburg; died November 4, 1847, in Leipzig)
Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy, who had his first public performance at the age of nine.
When the most distinguished musicians of the day assured his father, a wealthy banker, that the boy
was an authentic genius, nothing was spared to bring him to artistic maturity. No important touring
performer who visited the Prussian capital missed the musicales held on alternate Sundays in the
Mendelssohns’ great house in Berlin. Those house concerts always included chamber music,
sometimes an orchestra, occasionally even an opera. The guests often played, and almost every time
there was a work by the young composer. Mendelssohn composed a great deal of music in this very
early period, thirteen little symphonies and several concertos, for example, that he considered juvenilia
and never released for publication during his lifetime, but in this privileged workshop he developed
his skills and polished his craft.
The Piano Trio No. 2 is one of his mature, later works. The richness and the elegance of
Mendelssohn’s melodic invention, the beautifully proportioned extension and development of his
musical ideas, his rhythmic vigor and the brilliance of his writing for the combination of strings and
piano combine to make it also one of Mendelssohn’s most exemplary chamber works.
Late in his life, in December 1844, he began to extricate himself from public pressure by moving to
Frankfurt to live as a simple private citizen, refusing all kinds of engagements, among which was an
invitation to participate in a music festival in distant New York. It was in Frankfurt that he
completed his six Organ Sonatas and, in February 1845, began this trio, which he finished in the spring
or early summer.
In April he wrote to his sister, “The Trio is a bit nasty to play, but not really difficult.” In fact it is
not really “nasty,” but it is by no means easy. The piano part reflects the quiet power and the fleet,
fluent style that Mendelssohn’s contemporaries described in his playing. The string writing, too, is
demanding. The violinist in the first public performance, on December 20, 1845, was Ferdinand
David, for whom Mendelssohn had written his Violin Concerto in 1844. The Trio is dedicated to Louis
Spohr (1784-1859), an important violinist and composer.
This trio is a large work and a more serious one than his popular, earlier Trio in D minor. It is a nearly
perfect example of Mendelssohn’s mastery of a difficult esthetic problem: Romantic expression
within Classical forms. The principal material of the first movement, Allegro energico e con fuoco, is
a pair of contrasting themes, the first darkly passionate and the second gentle and lyrical, both
powerfully developed. The two middle movements are lighter in tone, a simple Andante espressivo
and a witty, elfin Scherzo, Molto allegro, quasi presto. In the Finale, the leaping first subject returns
us to the emotional world of the first movement. There are tempestuous outbursts, dramatic
contrasts, tense textures, a Lutheran hymn tune, and at the end, a coda of great power.