Mainstage Chamber Concert 2: Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 7:30PM, Arkell Pavilion, SVAC
Ludwig van Beethoven (b. Germany| d. Austria; 1770 – 1827)
Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1 No. 3 (composed 1793)
Lest the reader be fooled into thinking that this trio is a juvenile composition due to its opus number, it is important to understand that Ludwig van Beethoven’s portfolio of completed works was already quite extensive by 1795 (the year of publication), and the choice to publish a set of three piano trios as his official opus 1 was strategic. Interestingly, Franz Joseph Haydn (Beethoven’s esteemed mentor and the dedicatee of these works) advised him against the move to publish, ascribing his reasoning to these trios’ unprecedented complexities and technical difficulties. Beethoven disregarded Hadyn’s advice, and the strategy was a striking success: from the get-go, these works enjoyed widespread viewership and critical acclaim.
Beethoven himself felt that the most successful of these was the C minor trio, and it is noteworthy that, throughout his career, works in C minor appear to have represented for Beethoven a special subset of dramatic compositions inspired by the concept of sturm und drang (a German literary and musical movement defined as storm and stress that uses extreme emotions to express resistance against what was perceived as Age of Enlightenment hyper-rationalism). The work is cast in four movements: a first movement in sonata-allegro form; a slow and expressive second movement, in this case a theme with variations; a third movement consisting of a minuet and contrasting trio section; and a fast finale. Unusually, the frenetic fourth movement ends quietly and somewhat mysteriously, Beethoven eschewing the expected norm of ending with a “bang” in favor of remaining true to the more reflective nature of the work.
Frank Bridge (b. United Kingdom | d. United Kingdom; 1879 – 1941)
Phantasie for Piano Trio in C minor, H. 79 (composed circa 1907)
Frank Bridge’s Phantasie for Piano Trio in C minor earned him first prize in the Walter Willson Cobbett composition competition dedicated to works specifically written in the “phantasy” genre: that is, single-movement works of moderate length that pay tribute to the 16th-century “fancy,” considered at the time to represent the apotheosis of late-Renaissance English chamber music.
This trio is indeed composed in one unbroken movement, though Bridge cleverly orders its sections in a framework recognizable as a quasi four-movement sonata structure. It begins with a series of accentuated rhetorical statements, then it proceeds into a ruminating thematic zone. The language is sumptuous, with sweeping melodic lines and emotional outbursts, and when the music comes to a halt, a scherzo-like second area emerges. Playful and quirky, Bridge dazzles with bravura displays before settling down into the slow third area of the work. Here, he withdraws inward, presenting poetic themes exchanged by all three instruments followed by a seamless return to the opening material. After a full recapitulation, Bridge concludes the trio with a sunny coda.
Maurice Ravel (b. France | d. France; 1875 – 1937)
Piano Trio in A minor (composed 1914)
Maurice Ravel composed his piano trio in an uncharacteristic rush to completion just as Europe descended into the madness of World War I, in which Ravel served as an ambulance driver for the 13th artillery regiment (his small physical bearing precluding him from serving in his preferred capacity of soldier). Though the work bears the hallmarks of modernity vis-à-vis ripe dissonances, special effects (such as whistling harmonics, plucked strings, percussive piano writing), and mixed rhythmic meters, it also contains subtle references to ancient dance forms, poetry, and far-eastern aesthetics.
The first movement – a delicate montage of lilting dance rhythms, frenetic gestures, and meditative stillness – owes to Ravel’s close association with Basque music and culture (he was raised in the portion of France bordering Spain’s Basque region). Ravel alludes to the Basque zortziko, with its distinctive combinations of eight beats divided into groups of 2-3-3 or 3-2-3, and his expert usage of the instruments creates the remarkable deception that the ensemble is scored for many more players. The rapid pointillistic second movement – entitled Pantoum – is based on a Malaysian poetic form in which the first verse’s second and fourth lines repeat as the second verse’s first and third lines, etc. The middle area briefly references American jazz amidst conflicting meters in which the strings occupy a different time signature from the piano. The slow third movement is a Passacaille – a Baroque form in which a recurring bassline serves as the fundamental basis upon which variations are superimposed in increasing levels of complexity. Here, Ravel unfolds the narrative patiently, allowing it to rise to great heights and fall back into hushed silence with painstaking deliberateness. The triumphant fourth movement is orchestral in nature, Ravel pushing the three instruments to operate at the very boundaries of technical possibility, and the trio concludes in an ebullient splash of powerful chords and cascading trills.