Piano sonatas with accompaniments for violin and cello were a popular style of domestic music in the late eighteenth century and were the origin of the form that soon started to be called the piano trio. Haydn’s status as one of the great musical innovators is unassailable: to be known as the ‘Father of…’ both the symphony and the string quartet – and to be a composer of genius – gives him a unique place in the history of music; but the same could be said of his development of the piano trio. The present example is one of a set of three first published in London in 1797 and written for the pianist Therese Jansen. She was a pupil of Clementi, and Haydn was a witness at her wedding to the art dealer Gaetano Bartolozzi. Much admired by musicians, Jansen had little or no public career despite her gifts – a typical state of affairs for female pianists at the time. On the evidence of the virtuoso piano writing in the E major Piano Trio, she must have been an exceptional player. Haydn creates some extraordinary musical effects right from the start: the opening theme is presented by the piano, shadowed by pizzicato strings, over a staccato bass line. After this ethereal start, there’s a complete contrast in the rapid piano figuration that follows.  In the development section, the opening theme is transformed into a kind of chorale, in the remote key of A flat major. The expressive range of this movement is remarkable, as is the striking change of mood for the Allegretto that follows. Written in E minor, it opens with a theme in continuous quavers playing by all three instruments in octaves, and this idea then becomes the bass line for the whole movement. Different ideas are heard over the top of it, and unlike a Baroque ground bass, Haydn’s snaking line evolves and modulates. The finale is just as unpredictable. The opening theme sounds straightforward enough, but Haydn stretches out its second phrase in an unpredictable way. And while a section in E minor is conventional enough for a finale in E major, the brief excursion into E flat minor must have caused consternation at the time. So, too, must the passages near the close where the music pauses on highly chromatic chords before finally heading to an affirmative close.  

Nigel Simeone © 2015