Trio in B-flat major, K. 502
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The genre of the piano trio was developed during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and it soon became a fashionable medium for Vienna’s amateur musicians. The piano trio evolved from another type of work, the accompanied keyboard sonata. In the sonata, the keyboard instrument had a fully developed and primary role and was joined by a violin or by a violin and a cello. The violin and cello reinforced the melody and bass of the keyboard part or provided a background of sustained notes. Haydn composed numerous works of this type. In Haydn’s piano trios, the violin began to gain greater independence, but the cello remained subordinate.
As a child, Mozart composed six sonatas for keyboard accompanied by violin (or flute) and cello. In 1776, he composed a work in which the violin occasionally had more interesting material, but the cello remained relegated to its former role. This work was called “Divertimento,” though it is a typical three-movement sonata. Then, in 1786 and 1788, the same two years in which he completed his last four symphonies, Mozart wrote his five mature piano trios. In these works, the keyboard has the most complete part but the violin has independence and, to a lesser degree, the cello as well.
It is interesting to note that in 1785 Mozart published his “Haydn” Quartets, which were the “fruits of a long and laborious endeavor.” These quartets are distinguished by the four-part discourse in which each instrument participates. Mozart then transferred this conception of a “musical conversation” to the medium of the piano trio. This development with regard to texture constitutes one facet of the increasing complexity and expansiveness of Mozart’s music beginning in the mid-1780s, which led some nineteenth-century music scholars to divide Mozart’s creative activity into two periods, the first ending in 1783 and the second extending from 1784 until the composer’s death in 1791.
The Trio in B-flat major, K. 502, was completed in November of 1786 and published in 1788. The venerable musicologist Alfred Einstein opined that this Trio “contains everything of concertante display that can be placed within the frame of a piano trio.” What Einstein meant by this remark was that the Trio integrated the opportunity for soloistic brilliance that one might find in a concerto with the more intimate communication between the instruments that characterizes Mozart’s mature chamber works. Einstein illustrated that the first movement of the Trio is related, with regard to both key and thematic material, to Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 450, which was composed in 1784. He averred: “The Larghetto sounds like the transcription of a deeply felt slow movement from a piano concerto into the domain of chamber music, and the finale begins like the rondo of a concerto, as if with a solo passage…answered by a tutti passage…but without any sacrifice of the finely wrought detail of chamber music. In every measure one finds the freshness, the nobility of invention, and the inspired mastery that synthesize the contrasted elements of brilliance and intimacy, contrapuntal craftsmanship and galanterie, into a higher unit.” The Trio’s finale is linked motivically with its first movement and manifests a particularly high level of invention with regard to thematic variation.
Trio No. 2 “Reveille”
Stanley Silverman
Stanley Silverman is an American composer who was born in New York in 1938. He studied with Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud at Mills College and with Henry Cowell and Vladimir Ussachevsky at Columbia University. Silverman is most associated with musical theater, but he has written a number of operas as well.
The Piano Trio No. 2 was commissioned for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio by the son of the composer, Ben Silverman. The work is dedicated to the memory of Herman Sandler. An investment banker and philanthropist, Sandler was a friend of the Silverman family. He died in the attacks of September 11. The first performance of the work took place several months ago, on September 15, 2011, at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. For that performance, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio was joined by the popular musician Sting, who sang a vocal part in an alternative version of the Piano Trio’s “Lute Song” movement. Sandler was an important contributor to the Rainforest Fund, which was founded by Sting.
Stanley Silverman has provided the following note for his Trio No. 2 “Reveille:"
The title Reveille, rather than representing the wake-up call used in the military, acknowledges as in the classical tradition (Rasumovsky Quartets) the commissioner, my son Ben Silverman, the founder of Reveille Studios. Ben wished to commemorate the memory of our friend Herman Sandler, a victim of the World Trade Center tragedy.
Herman Sandler was well known as a driving force in the international classical music community who, along with his wife Suki, supported the entire gamut of the concert world from student development to the Israel Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall. Professionally I was involved with Herman at the annual Rainforest Foundation concerts held at Carnegie. But it was as a family friend that I have the most cherished memories of Herman. Our children were classmates from grade school through college and he was certainly a mentor and important influence on my son Ben.
Dear listener, this piece is not intended to “hang together” any more than life itself. In fact, the dedicatee, a joyful, lively chap, would spend an entire day shopping and cooking a Michelin restaurant quality gourmet dinner and gleefully roll out corner candy store bars in wrappers for dessert with an aperitif. Consequently, taking a page from Mahler and Ives, I have utilized several musical languages, both tonal and abstract, each with their own rules. Included are classical key relationships, “schoolboy” fugues, all original and connected thematically. The few brief quotes are so blatant they will be easily recognizable.
1. Meadow Lane is a narrow strip of land in Southampton, New York, which separates the rough Atlantic Ocean from the calm bay. The piano introduces the accompaniment part of fear no more…(mvt. 5), in passages that alternate between the rough and the smooth resulting in a kind of Water Music.
2. Prelude to Guajira y Fuga (Cello Solo). This cello movement “comments” on the Fear No More themes with variations that are fed by permutations (inversions, etc.). The florid improvisatory sound of the cello owes a debt to Sainte Colombe, a 17th century basse de viol player and composer. In the context of this trio it serves as the free-form introduction to rhythmic pieces that are prevalent in Latino dance music.
3. Guajira y Fuga takes its direct inspiration from the fact that the classical and latin music FM radio stations are right next to each other in New York. I will often compulsively switch from one to the other, not that the listener is expected to imagine the running of the kitchen faucet as an additional element, but it certainly enhances the experience. The challenge presented to the performers is to be able to “surf” the abruptly shifting musical languages. A Guajira is traditional Cuban vaquero (cowboy) song over which I introduce Boccheriniesque variations. The fugue is original and uses the bass line of the Guajira as the theme and is meant to sound “authentic” as a contrast to the “Latin” music. (Incidently, Hermann Sandler had developed a talent for Latin dancing after a trip to Cuba in 2001.) The movement quotes a Shakespeare era piece: Joyne Hands by Thomas Morley. I incorporated it here because it gets my vote as one of the happiest tunes of all time.
4-5. Introduction & Lute Song: Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun is based on Shakespeare’s song from Cymbeline. It is a prayer sung by two Princes in which a family member is laid to rest in peace unthreatened by extreme elements. Musically I was influenced by the late 19th century composers including Fauré for his ability to avoid the maudlin while concentrating on melody. The form is based on an Elizabethan lute pavanne. There are also motifs reminiscent of George Harrison and Sting, whose performances of Dowland songs were a key inspiration.
6. Postlude to Guajira y Fuga features the violin and is a double, that is, a variation of the cello movement (Prelude to Guajira y Fuga) which has been developed further and accompanied. The notes “H” (B-natural) and “Es” or “S” (E-flat) are highlighted symbolizing HS.
7. Closer: Les Folies d’Al (Second Line) is a set of variations on the well known motif from Paul Simon’s landmark song, You Can Call Me Al, used with permission. The movement celebrates a 1970 holiday party at Paul’s home to which I brought Pierre Boulez, who was then in his first year as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. This was the very party that inspired the Al-Betty song. It was also the first time I met James Taylor. Consequently, as homage to that wondrous evening, I decided to write a set of abstract variations called “couplets,” derived from the French Baroque, as is the title: Les Folies… Closer is the term used for the finale in a Pops concert. Second Line refers to the upbeat dance that follows a traditional New Orleans funeral. Perhaps the biggest influence for this work is Jordi Savall, the Catalan viol player, who reawakened interest in early music string playing with verve and panache. Particularly impressive is his ability to build long improvisations based on four-measure fragments. This procedure inspired the construction of the Al movement.
Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 “Archduke”
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven began his career as a piano virtuoso as well as a composer. Therefore, it is not surprising that he was drawn to the medium of the piano trio, which he cultivated during the early and middle periods of his musical career. Beethoven’s most significant contributions to the piano trio literature were his three trios, Op. 1, completed in 1795, the two trios, Op. 70, composed in 1808, and the “Archduke” Trio, Op. 97, composed in 1811.
The Op. 97 Trio acquired the sobriquet “Archduke” because of its dedication to Archduke Rudolph. The Archduke was the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire and the brother of the last Holy Roman Emperor, Franz II. From about 1809, the Archduke was one of Beethoven’s most generous patrons. Beethoven rewarded him with numerous dedications, including the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos and the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. Rudolph studied piano and composition with Beethoven, and he preserved Beethoven’s letters and collected manuscripts and first editions. He became Archbishop of Olmütz in 1820, and it was to celebrate this event that Beethoven wrote his Missa solemnis, Op. 123.
The “Archduke” Trio opens with a movement in sonata form offering a broad and beautiful first theme that dominates most of the movement. Some musicologists have identified a new “Romantic” element in Beethoven’s music that can be heard in Op. 97 as well as in some preceding works, including the “Harp” Quartet, Op. 74. This Romanticism is characterized by a heightened sense of lyricism. The first and third movements of Op. 97 are particularly lyrical.
As in many of Beethoven’s later works, the scherzo movement in Op. 97 is the second movement, coming before the slow movement. The scherzo’s contrapuntal trio section is in B-flat minor, but it has its own middle section that is waltz-like and is cast, initially at least, in the striking key of E major. The scherzo concludes with a coda. The slow third movement, in D major, is a set of variations on a graceful theme, while the finale, a sonata-rondo, closes the work exuberantly in B-flat.
Beethoven was the pianist in performances of the “Archduke” Trio in 1814. Except for appearances in the more limited role of an accompanist, these performances were the last in which Beethoven played the piano. The composer Louis Spohr, who heard Beethoven perform, described his unfortunate state: “On account of his deafness there was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist which had formerly been so greatly admired. In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys till the strings jangled, and in the piano he played so softly that whole groups of tones were omitted, so that the music was unintelligible….”
Program Notes by Darlene R. Berkovitz
