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Program Notes – Gryphon Trio Salon Concert, Apr 13, 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Jason S. Heilman, Ph.D.
Joseph Haydn cast a long shadow over several musical
genres: the symphony and the string quartet, of course,
but also the piano trio, which he had helped to develop
out of the sonata tradition. Haydn’s format for piano trios—cast in three movements, like a sonata—as well as his
focus on the keyboard as the central instrument became
the standard in Vienna by the late 1790s. But there was
still room for composers to make the genre their own,
and tonight’s program sees Haydn’s most famous successors adapting his piano trio legacy to suit their own
personalities.
Trio in B flat Major, K. 502
composed in 1786 – duration: 23 minutes
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
During his first five years in Vienna, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart experienced a remarkable string of successes,
from his German opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, to his burgeoning career as a concert pianist, to his
well-received set of string quartets dedicated to Haydn.
With so much money coming in, Mozart and his new
wife Constanze began to develop a taste for the good life.
It was in 1786, however, that all this began to change.
That year witnessed the disastrous run of his revolutionary opera Le Nozze di Figaro at the Vienna Burgtheater,
embarrassingly short at only nine performances. Afterwards, Mozart’s concert appearances as a pianist began
to taper off dramatically for reasons that are still not
completely understood. Making matters worse, the Mozarts suffered a personal tragedy in the fall of 1786, when
their newborn son Johann Thomas Leopold died before
he was even a month old, the second of four Mozart children to die in infancy. The operatic failures and reduced
concert appearances took their toll on Mozart’s finances,
and with Austria’s ongoing war with Turkey diverting
funding and attention away from the arts, Mozart struggled to make up for his lost income.
Yet despite his public setbacks, Mozart still had friends
with whom he frequently made music, and his activities
in that sphere can be attested by the string of chamber
works he composed after the failure of Figaro in Vienna.
The second half of 1786 saw the creation of several of
Mozart’s most famous chamber compositions, including
his “Kegelstatt” Trio, which he wrote to play alongside
his clarinetist friend Anton Stadler, as well as his “Hoffmeister” String Quartet, his fourth and last Quartet for
Flute and Strings, and two piano trios. The two piano
trios (K.496 and K.502) were Mozart’s first works in the
genre in ten years, following a youthful divertimento for
the same instruments from his Salzburg days. For Mozart, chamber music had a dual allure: it could be played
recreationally in jovial private gatherings with friends,
and it could also be published quickly for extra income.
Given the growing market for piano trios in the 1780s, it
seems likely that Mozart’s two trios from 1786 were examples of the latter.
The typical late eighteenth-century trio featured the piano and the violin heavily, with the cello merely augmenting the keyboard’s left hand as a sort of basso continuo holdover from the Baroque era. With the second of
his 1786 piano trios, the B flat Major Trio, K.502, Mozart
pushed the boundaries of that relationship: the piano
part still dominates, of course, and the violin still plays
the countermelodies, but Mozart now has the cello working in tandem with the violin much more often, with the
two of them serving as a unit to counterbalance the increasingly heavy-sounding keyboards of the era. This
slight rearrangement of forces was a minor breakthrough
that would lead the way for the later piano trio masterworks of Ludwig van Beethoven. Like all of Mozart’s piano trios, K.502 has a three-movement scheme; the allegro first movement begins with an ebullient theme in the
piano that belies the difficult circumstances of Mozart’s
life at the time; this theme serves as the basis for all of
the melodies of the movement. In the larghetto second
movement, however, we are treated to some of Mozart’s
most lyrically introspective music, again presented primarily in the piano with contributions from the strings.
Mozart likely composed this trio during the period of his
newborn son’s illness, and it is hard not to hear the
poignancy of Mozart’s experiences in this movement.
Sensitive to the spell he wove in the larghetto, Mozart
brings his listeners back down to earth gradually in the
delicate allegretto finale, which takes its time to establish the brilliant rondo theme that gets passed among the
three instruments, closing the work on a characteristically Mozartean note of optimism.
Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 70, No. 2
composed in 1808 – duration: 34 minutes
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Even though he was regarded during his own lifetime as
the greatest composer in Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven’s finances were not always secure. He steadfastly
refused to take on a position as a Kapellmeister to a noble court—the job Joseph Haydn had held for most of his
career—and he only took on the bare minimum of students. Rather, Beethoven intended to make his living
entirely as a freelance composer, in spite of the fact that
Mozart had so famously died attempting the same thing.
While Beethoven managed to scrape by on the money he
made from his early chamber compositions and solo appearances, he often had to rely on the kindness of friends
and admirers to make ends meet. Thus his enthusiastic
patrons would frequently pre-pay for commissions, float
loans, and even give Beethoven access to their homes
and vacation cottages so that the cantankerous composer
could have a place to work undisturbed. This was still the
case even after the premiere of Beethoven’s groundbreaking “Eroica” Symphony in 1805, though a string of
wildly successful compositions, starting with his Fifth
Symphony, would soon give him all the financial security
he needed.
During the autumn of 1808 (a year after he completed
his Fifth Symphony and shortly after he finished his
Sixth), Beethoven lived for several months at the city
palace of Countess Marie von Erdödy. The countess,
some nine years Beethoven’s junior, had long been an
(apparently platonic) friend and admirer of the composer, and had frequently helped to introduce him to new
patrons. Beethoven decided to show his gratitude by
dedicating two new piano trios to her that winter, which
he published together as his Opus 70. These were Beethoven’s first contributions to the piano trio genre since
his 1797 “Gassenhauer” Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano, and his first trios specifically composed for piano
and strings since his Opus 1. Like his contemporaneous
Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, which were premiered together and published sequentially as Opp. 67 and 68,
Beethoven’s two Opus 70 trios have starkly contrasting
characters: No. 1 is the so-called “Ghost” Trio in D major, and its turbulence recalls the stormy Fifth. The second of the Opus 70 trios has a more genial character;
cast in the key of E-flat major, it recalls at times the more
cheerful music of the “Pastoral” Sixth Symphony.
Like Beethoven’s earliest piano trios (the Opus 1 triptych), the E-flat Major Trio is cast in four movements,
rather than a Haydnesque three. Breaking from established traditions, however, this trio seems to lack a genuine slow movement, as both of the inner movements are
marked at a moderate allegretto tempo. The first movement begins with a slow introduction, with the cello, violin, and piano making staggered entrances in a theme
that Beethoven repeatedly brings back to mark the
movement’s key structural points. This soon transitions
into a pleasant allegro, ma non troppo main section,
based on melodies from the introduction. Notably, the
cello often introduces the themes in this movement, finally bringing the instrument into full partnership with
the piano and the violin. The allegretto second movement is a theme and variations, which begins in a jaunty
major key, then veers into the darker minor tonalities for
its conclusion. The brighter third movement, enigmatically marked allegretto, ma non troppo (it is not clear in
this case whether Beethoven meant not too fast or not
too slow), features a singing, almost Schubertian melody
carried mainly by the violin and the piano, very closely
recalling the first movement theme from Beethoven’s
own Twelfth Piano Sonata, Op. 26 (1801). The flow of
this movement is interrupted three times (counting the
coda) by a contrasting chordal melody. It is only in the
allegro finale that Beethoven shows flashes of his characteristic intensity, yet even here the music is jovial rather than relentless, and the momentum occasionally
breaks down, giving a dramatic finish to an otherwise
genteel trio.