Schumann spent much of the summer of 1847 at work on his D minor Piano Trio – the work was sketched in June and the movement were completed in August and September. It was probably written as a response to the Trio that his wife Clara had composed the previous year. The first private performance was given on 13 September with Clara at the piano – it was her birthday, and just six days after Schumann had finished the finale. In the first movement (marked ‘with energy and passion’) the music alternates between the volatile minor-key opening and a more serene theme in the major. A remarkable and innovative feature of this movement is Schumann’s writing for the instruments: during a wonderfully evocative passage in the central development section the strings are instructed to play on the bridge (‘sul ponticello’) while the piano uses the una corda (left-hand) pedal. The effect is extraordinary. For all its apparent straightforward high spirits, the second movement – a Scherzo – gave Schumann a lot of trouble, especially the central Trio section where the three instruments play a rising and falling scale-like theme in imitation. The slow movement is back in a minor key, and is marked ‘with intimate expression’. Its opening theme (on the violin) unfolds hesitantly at first, but this initial idea grows into a long, sinuous melody. As in the famous Piano Quintet (written in 1842), the finale of the Trio includes a transformation of the theme that opened the first movement, but now the mood is exultant and untroubled.  

Nigel Simeone © 2010