Three Trios

“There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.”  –Plato

On Sunday, March 12 at 3 p.m. we return to Sanders Theatre at Harvard University for our third concert of 2023 and sixth of our celebratory 40^th Anniversary Season. We present three piano trios, differently comprised, from differing decades, by composers often named within historical triads, yet from the same lyrical Viennese tradition.

After hearing him play as principal clarinetist in the orchestra at Meiningen and as soloist in concertos by Mozart and Weber, the superb artistry of Richard Mühlfeld led Johannes Brahms to postpone retirement to create Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in A minor, Op. 114, the first of four sublime late chamber works. The Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115 and two Sonatas for clarinet and piano, Op. 120 are the additional products of their friendship. The idea of using clarinet opposite the cello within a piano trio may have come to mind from knowing two earlier works by Beethoven, Trio Op. 11 (1797), or the arrangement of the Op. 20 Septet published 1803 as Op. 38, or from learning that Mühlfeld began professional life as a violinist who taught himself to play the clarinet.

Alban Berg is regarded as the more Romantic of the two composers (i.e., Anton Webern) who followed Arnold Schoenberg’s lead into post-tonality at the start of the Twentieth century. In his writings Schoenberg described Brahms’s technique for deriving melodies and structures from continuous variation as ‘progressive’ and crucial to his own move toward atonality. Others considered Brahms conservative of Absolute non-representational Classical values of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven when compared to Romantic contemporaries such as Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner.

Adagio, from 1935, is a later chamber arrangement for violin, clarinet and piano of the second movement of his three-movement Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Thirteen Wind Instruments (1923-25). Intimate conversational exchanges of pitches, timbres, and harmonies among the instruments, virtuosic displays and the push and pull of tempo changes among its five sections show Berg’s genius for turning this complex concerto toward what chamber music does best.

“Alban Berg dedicated the Chamber Concerto to Arnold Schoenberg for his fiftieth birthday…Berg himself wrote a description of his work in a letter of dedication to Arnold Schoenberg. From this letter can be gathered his obsession with the symbolics of numbers. Indeed, the work is based on the number 3 and its multiples. The work combines the names of ArnolD SCHoenBErG, Anton wEBErn, and AlBAn BErG, of which the letters apt for musical transcription are isolated. The three motifs so conceived are deployed in a kind of dedication with the motto: Aller guten Dinge…sind drei! which Berg has completed in sound if not words.”  –Pierre Boulez

The overall organization of movement is a palindrome: that is, music that moves forward to a central high point from which the score proceeds in reverse. That central point is signified by the sounding 12 times of a low C-sharp (or D-flat) as though chiming the late hour.

Piano Trio in E-flat major was the second epic work for the standard four-movement ensemble of violin, cello and piano by Franz Schubert, begun eight months following Beethoven’s death in March 1827 and a year before his own on November 19, 1828. His first piano trio was in the key of B-flat, the same as Beethoven’s final piano trio, the “Archduke.” More expansive of the two, Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat was one of few Schubert’s works the composer heard in performance. Performers, scholars and audiences have recognized Beethoven’s influence and the ways in which Schubert has found his own path through use of extended melody, literal repetitions, unusual key changes, and return of motif. The work is one of few chamber music works to have earned crossover stature in the sound tracks of popular film and documentaries.

Enjoy,

MT