ROMANTIC PIANO TRIOS
Leonore Piano Trio
Upper Chapel, Sheffield
Friday 14 October 2022, 7.00pm
£20
£14 Disabled / UC and PIP recipients
£5 Under 35s & Students
HAYDN Piano Trio in F sharp minor Hob.XV:26 (14’)
HUW WATKINS Piano Trio No.2 (c.25’)
Music in the Round co-commission with Presteigne Festival and Wigmore Hall for Leonore Piano Trio
MENDELSSOHN Piano Trio No.1 in D minor (30’)
The Leonore Trio – Tim Horton, Benjamin Nabarro and Gemma Rosefield – are now firmly established as one of the finest piano trios performing today. This concert continues their theme of the great 19th century works for trio, alongside those of the father of the piano trio, Joseph Haydn, and a brand-new commission created by the inimitable Huw Watkins. Mendelssohn’s first foray into the medium produced a masterpiece of passion, energy and lyricism.
HAYDN Joseph, Piano Trio in F sharp minor, Hob XV:26
Allegro
Adagio cantabile
Finale. Tempo di Menuetto
This trio was the last of three new works composed for the pianist Rebecca Schroeter during Haydn’s visit to London in 1794–5 for the first performances of the last six of his ‘London’ Symphonies. The second of this, with its ‘Gypsy’ Rondo, is probably Haydn’s best-known trio, but the present work, in F sharp minor, is much more elusive and subtle, though the wistful mood of the opening is soon changed by a move towards major keys and increasing animation in the piano part. The slow movement – in the very unusual key for the time of F sharp major – is a reworking of the F major slow movement of Haydn’s Symphony No.102. In the symphony this is headed ‘In Nomine Domini’ (In the Name of the Lord) – a reminder of the religious inspiration of some of Haydn’s secular works. The finale is unusual: a rather stately Minuet in F sharp minor, with a contrasting central section in F sharp major. The close is dramatic and rather austere.
© Nigel Simeone
WATKINS Huw Thomas, Piano Trio No.2
Although my second piano trio runs continuously without a break for around quarter of an hour, it divides into four main sections which correspond roughly with a more traditional four movement scheme. Two slow movements are followed by two fast movements. The music was co-commissioned by Presteigne Festival, Music in the Round and Wigmore Hall for the Leonore Trio, and is dedicated to George Vass.
© Huw Watkins 2022
MENDELSSOHN Felix, Piano Trio No.1 in D minor
Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo. Leggiero e vivace
Finale. Allegro assai appassionato
Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio was started in February 1839, but it was not until the summer that he got down to serious work (on the autograph manuscript the first movement is dated ‘6 June 1839’ and the last ’18 July 1839’), and he put the finishing touches to it in September. It was a busy year for Mendelssohn, not only as a composer but also as a conductor: on 21 March he conducted the world première of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony.
The first performance of Mendelssohn’s D minor Trio took place in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 1 February 1840, played by Mendelssohn himself with the violinist Ferdinand David and cellist Carl Wittmann. Robert Schumann’s review in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was ecstatic: he hailed Mendelssohn as ‘the Mozart of the nineteenth century’ and ‘the most brilliant of modern musicians.’ High praise indeed, but fully justified by a work that has a brooding passion that is at once very much of its time but also harks back to the Mozart of the Don Giovanni Overture and to the D minor Piano Concerto (K466) – a work which Mendelssohn performed on a number of occasions and for which he composed cadenzas. The Mendelssohn scholar Larry Todd has echoed Schumann’s view, describing the work as ‘a masterful trio with subtle relationships between the movements, and a psychological curve that incorporates the agitated brooding of the first, subdued introspection of the second and the playful frivolity of the third. The finale combines all three moods, before reconciling them in the celebratory D-major ending.’
© Nigel Simeone
