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About the Program
The
program offered this evening by the Trio con Brio Copenhagen displays
three different facets of the rich literature for piano trio. Haydn's
late C-major Trio is a scintillating entertainment. Ravel's lone Trio
draws its inspiration from a broadly cosmopolitan culture (such a
culture also represented by our performing ensemble themselves!), while
Shostakovich's masterful E-minor Trio is a heartfelt memorial to a man
and to a way of life.
Most of Haydn's piano trios were written for amateur performers, and as
music publishers increasingly sought these pieces they turned out to be
good money-makers for the composer, who was granted freedom to
"moonlight" by his nominal employer, Prince Esterhazy. Some of the late
trios, however, are very different in that they were composed for two of
Haydn's women friends in London who were very accomplished pianists.
The brilliant Trio in C, numbered 27 in Antony van Hoboken's catalog,
and 39th in A. P. Brown's chronological list of the 45, is one of three
written in 1794 or 1795 for the virtuoso player Therese Jansen
Bartolozzi, pupil of Clementi and herself a teacher much acclaimed among
the London nobility. (The last three of Haydn's solo piano sonatas,
again more advanced technically than his earlier ones, were also
intended for Mrs. Bartolozzi.) While Haydn's trios are in effect
accompanied piano pieces, in this one the strings contribute a good bit
of weight, color and variety to the tonal texture. Musically this is a
superb work. The thematically rich first movement contains a deft
contrapuntal development section. In the Andante, a seemingly
"ordinary" tune receives an elaborate accompaniment before it is
interrupted by a turbulent minor-key section which also provides plenty
of notes for the violin. This sparkling trio is capped by a Presto
finale which rivals the wildest athleticism of Scarlatti in its headlong
drive.
Maurice Ravel was not a prolific composer, but his music invariably
shows an exquisite finish, nowhere better displayed than in his choice
handful of chamber works. Typically he wrote only one piece of a given
type, thus there is only the single piano trio. The Trio in A minor was
put on paper during the fateful summer of 1914, with Ravel working
rapidly to complete it before his military service. But the work had
been germinating since at least 1908. "My trio is finished. I only
need the themes for it," he wrote at one point, suggesting that the
structure and inner relationships were uppermost in his mind. When it
came to the themes, however, Ravel used a similar progresssion of
intervals as motif in the first three movements, and then inverted the
pattern for the finale. The first movement is spacious, its 8/8 meter
divided into a pervasive 3+3+2, shared with a 3+2+3 permutation. The "Pantoum"
movement serves as a scherzo; its title derives from a Malayan verse
form introduced into French literature by Victor Hugo. The repeated
juxtaposition of musical phrases suggests the poetic form, in which the
second and fourth lines of a four-line stanza become the first and third
lines of the next stanza. The trio section is a marvelous example of
cross-rhythms between piano and strings. Next comes a slow passacaglia
movement. The eight-measure theme is first played as a single line deep
in the bass of the piano, then is taken up by the strings. Building
through a great arch, the movement ends as it began, in the lowest range
of the piano. The climax of the Trio is reached in the brilliant
finale, based on 7/4 and 5/4 rhythms from the Basque folk music of
Ravel's native region.
Dmitri Shostakovich made his initial reputation as a composer of
symphonies, ballets and operas, some of which got him into hot water in
Stalin's Soviet Union. Beginning in mid-career, however, he turned
increasingly to chamber music as a more personal means of expression.
The Trio No. 2, in E minor, was written in 1944 in remembrance of his
closest friend, the musicologist Ivan Solertinsky, who had died suddenly
of a heart attack. . This memorial trio, therefore, continued a Russian
tradition going back to Arensky, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, among
others, who wrote trios in memory of departed friends. While it is a
response to a personal loss, the music also seems influenced by
Shostakovich's wartime experiences. Unusual features occur from the
very beginning, where the cello, playing solo in very high harmonics, is
then joined by the muted violin playing at a much lower pitch. The
piano writing throughout is exceptionally lean, and the two hands are
often separated by three or even four octaves. Following the elegiac
Andante introduction, the first movement, according to another friend of
the composer, Dmitri Rabinovich, is "a clear, poetic picture of everyday
Russian life." The marvelously vigorous scherzo, over all too soon,
seems like a further celebration of life. The Largo, however, is
obviously a requiem, built over a solemn succession of eight chords in
the piano which repeat throughout the movement. The finale, which
follows without a break, "is where the real tragedy is unfolded," says
Rabinovich. Again there are dances, but of death rather than life. The
somber tolling of the Largo recurs just before the quiet close.
Edwin Daley
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