ROMANTIC PIANO TRIOS

Mendelssohn wrote the Variations concertantes for cello and piano when he was twenty years old. It is one of two pieces that Mendelssohn devoted to his brother Paul, who played cello as a hobby, rather than as a profession like his better-known siblings. Consisting of a theme and 8 following variations, the entire set is lyrical and elegant and showcases a clever thematic dialogue between the cello and the piano. The shifting attention between the two instruments is subtle, with the final variation bringing the piece to a close with an understated ending. 

i. Allegro con fuoco
ii. Scherzo
iii. Adagio sostenuto
iv. Finale: Allegretto

Chopin completed his only Piano Trio in 1829, the year in which he graduated from the Warsaw Conservatoire. It was an exciting time for the young composer: in the space of a few months he met Hummel and heard Paganini play. He also gave his début recital in Vienna and, back in Warsaw, gave the first performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor (which – confusingly – was the first of the two concertos to be written). The Trio opens with a stern series of chords marked ‘risoluto’, and the first movement is dark and impassioned. The Scherzo is more relaxed and benign, while the slow movement is quite surprising, since much of it is a dramatic dialogue between the three instruments that only occasionally blossoms into more extended melodic passages. The finale is very much in the style of the last movements of his piano concertos, written at the same time, but there’s also a ruggedness to the Trio that suggests the influence of Beethoven on the young Chopin. His letters reveal two interesting aspects of this work: firstly, it was composed quite slowly, over a the course of about a year; and second, Chopin contemplated a much more unusual scoring, using a viola instead of a violin, in order to achieve the kind of instrumental colour he was seeking here. As it turned out, he ended up with the traditional piano trio ensemble, but in 1830, a year after it was finished, he was still writing to a friend that is should be published with a viola part as an alternative to the violin, though this didn’t happen. Chopin’s Premier Trio (as it was described on the title page) was first printed by the Leipzig firm of Kistner in 1832 and in Paris and London (as his ‘First Grand Trio’) the following year, with a dedication to Prince Anton Radziwill – a name more often associated with Beethoven.

NIGEL SIMEONE 2010

i. Andante molto
ii. Allegretto, mit zarten Vortrage
iii. Leidenschaftlich schnell

Clara and Robert Schumann moved to Düsseldorf in early 1853, and found a house where Clara could practice and compose without disturbing her husband. She made the most of their improved circumstances and wrote several new pieces during the summer of 1853, including the Three Romances dedicated to Joseph Joachim, a close friend of both Robert and Clara. These character pieces, of which the third is much the longest, are among the last pieces Clara composed: Robert’s mental health took a turn for the worst the following year and he was moved to a sanatorium where Clara was only allowed to visit when it was clear that he was dying in 1856. After his death, she composed almost nothing, concentrating on playing the piano and overseeing Robert’s musical legacy.

Nigel Simeone 2014

i. Allegro energico e fuoco

ii. Andante espressivo

iii. Scherzo. Molto Allegro quasi Presto

iv. Allegro appassionato

The C minor Piano Trio was started in February 1845 and finished in Frankfurt on 30 April. Mendelssohn gave the manuscript to his sister Fanny on her birthday, 14 May, and the published score has a dedication to Louis Spohr. The first performance was given in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 20 December 1845, performed by Ferdinand David, Carl Wittmann and Mendelssohn himself. Mendelssohn’s own view of the work was equivocal: he told Spohr that ‘nothing seems good enough to me, and in fact neither does this trio.’ But this is to underestimate the power and intensity of the work. While it may not have the melodic exuberance of its predecessor (the better-known Piano Trio in D minor), it is dramatic and serious.

In the first movement, the darkly energetic opening theme on the piano accompanied by sustained strings sets the tone for much of what follows, and as a contrast it, Mendelssohn produces a gloriously ardent second theme in E flat major which provides most of the material for the development section, while the close of the movement has a vehemence that recalls Beethoven. The slow movement is a kind of Barcarolle (a favourite Mendelssohn form in solo piano works: there are several ‘Venetian Gondola Songs’ among his Songs without Words). The Scherzo is one of Mendelssohn’s distinctive and very fast duple-time movements, similar to the scherzo in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (composed in 1843). For the finale, Mendelssohn took his inspiration from J.S. Bach whose music he had done so much to revive. It begins as a kind of titanic Gigue, but it’s at the centre of the movement that the Bachian parallels are most striking. Mendelssohn introduces a chorale-like idea on the piano, its second phrase resembling the second line of the chorale known in English-speaking world as ‘All people that on earth do dwell’ (‘Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice’). As a composer with thoroughly Romantic sensibilities, Mendelssohn uses this to drive towards an exultant climax in C major.

© Nigel Simeone