Musicians from Marlboro

CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, April 22, 2012, 3pm Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) goals to destroy every harpsichord they could Hertz Hall Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in E-flat find as a symbolic smashing of the old aristoc- major, H. XV:29 racy—the new times in France called for a new musical instrument. Composed in 1796 or 1797. The social reason promoting the acceptance Musicians from Marlboro of the piano, one not unrelated to the upheavals Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violin The history of the piano is far more than the in France, was the rise of the middle class, the Hye-Jin Kim, violin mere recounting of the mechanical and techni- new gentry who had both leisure time and the Philip Kramp, viola cal development of an instrument—it is a virtu- money to enjoy it. In those days before record- al microcosm of the progress of modern Western ings and broadcasts, music could only be heard Peter Wiley, cello civilization. The first keyboard instrument at the instant and place it was produced, so the Anna Polonsky, piano capable of responding to the varying touch of demand for a musical instrument as the center the player was the gravicembalo col piano e forte of home entertainment—for the fashionable (“harpsichord with soft and loud”), invented piano—mounted. PROGRAM in Florence in 1709 by Bartolomeo Cristofori. The success of the piano as an item of com- Cristofori’s instrument, whose sound was acti- merce followed, of course, the increased demand. vated by a hammer thrown against a string ac- By the turn of the 19th century, and especially Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in E-flat major, cording to the force of the pressure applied at with the development of the metal-frame piano H. XV:29 (1796/1797) the keyboard, allowed for gradations of dynam- by Babcock in England in 1825, the instrument Poco Allegretto ics that were impossible on the plucked-string had become an important commercial product, Andantino ed innocentemente — harpsichord and was well suited to the growing amenable to being mass-manufactured and sold Finale. Allemande: Presto assai demand for music that would more intimately at reduced prices to a potentially enormous mar- mirror the passionate expression of the perform- ket. Profits soared, and so did the infestation er. It took Cristofori more than a decade to per- of pianos. Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) Quartet in A major, Op. 13, “Ist Es Wahr?” fect the mechanism and several more years for The early steps in the piano’s progress may (1827) various manufacturers to establish their trade be traced in Joseph Haydn’s compositions for in the instruments, but by the time Johann keyboard trio. Haydn’s earliest trios for key- Adagio — Allegro vivace Sebastian Bach played one of the new fortepianos board, violin and cello date from the mid– Adagio non lento — Poco più animato — Tempo I on his visit to the court of Frederick the Great at 1750s. Two of them, issued by the distinguished Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto — Berlin in 1747, he was able to declare his enthu- Amsterdam firm of Johann Julius Hummel in Allegro di molto — Tempo I siasm for it. During the 1760s and 1770s, the 1757 as Haydn’s Op. 4, were among his earli- Presto — Adagio non lento — Adagio piano slowly began to supplant the harpsichord; est published compositions, preceded only by Mozart acquired his first fortepiano in 1781, the the nine string quartets contained in Opp. 1, 2 year he moved to Vienna. and 3. These pieces, small in scale and courtly INTERMISSION The three factors that most strongly guided in expression, as befit the taste and situation of the full acceptance of the piano—one political, Count Ferdinand Maximilian von Morzin, his one social, one commercial—swung into place employer at the time, were clearly intended for Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Quintet for Piano and String Quartet in during the closing decades of the 18th century. the harpsichord, “accompanied,” as the style G minor, Op. 57 (1940) The political aspect involved nothing less than of the time dictated, by violin and cello. After Prelude: Lento — the French Revolution, the cataclysmic event joining the Esterházy musical establishment in Fugue: Adagio that hurled Europe into the modern egalitar- 1761, Haydn turned from the traditional key- Scherzo: Allegretto ian world. In terms both of quantity and qual- board trio to the genres of composition for the Intermezzo: Lento — ity, France had long been the most important curious “baryton,” a descendent of the old viol Finale: Allegretto country for the production of harpsichords, family that served as the principal performance and the disruption of its commerce effectively outlet for Prince Nikolaus. Haydn created 175 limited it as a source of musical instruments. works for baryton, some 126 of them as trios for Cal Performances’ 2011–2012 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. Indeed, the revolutionaries made it one of their the instrument joined by viola and cello. By the 20 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 21 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES time he returned to the keyboard trio in 1782, bulk of the musical argument to the keyboard, Europe. Upon the foundation of his fine general Mendelssohn had enlisted the town’s best vocal- the fortepiano had become the instrument of though the violin here enjoys a prominence that education had been placed disciplined training ists to rehearse the Passion and determined to choice for the burgeoning band of musical points to the increasingly independent role it in theory and composition from Carl Friedrich perform it in public—the renewal of interest in amateurs whose steady purchases were filling had assumed in chamber music by the turn of Zelter (a distinguished pedagogue who was then Bach’s music, and, indeed, the entire baroque the coffers of publishers and instrument dealers the 19th century. Though the piece was written the director of the Berlin Singakademie), tute- revival, date from that concert, on March 11, alike, and his second foray into trio composition principally for the growing market of British lage in violin with Carl Wilhelm Henning (a 1829, at the Singakademie. Complementing was undertaken to help satisfy that clientele’s lu- and Continental musical amateurs, it exhibits a respected member of the Berlin Opera orches- Mendelssohn’s antiquarian strain was his in- crative demand for new material. Haydn’s trios mastery of form and style and a breadth of ex- tra) and Eduard Rietz (a close friend who suc- terest in the most daring, avant-garde mu- of the 1780s, then, were tailored to the piano pression reminiscent of the contemporaneous ceeded Mendelssohn as director of the Leipzig sic of the day—the last works of Beethoven. rather than the harpsichord, and were generally symphonies that Haydn devised for his London Gewandhaus concerts upon the composer’s In the years before his death, in March 1827, lighter in style, simpler of execution and more concerts. The Trio’s opening movement is an death in 1847), and in piano with his mother (a Beethoven explored uncharted continents of compact in form (i.e., three movements rather ingenious hybrid of sonata and rondo proce- student of the noted German theorist Johann style and expression in his sonatas, quartets, than four) than are his contemporaneous quar- dures: the section based on a gracious melody Philipp Kirnberger, himself a pupil of Johann Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony, and tets, though they make few concessions to the presented at the outset returns twice (in the Sebastian Bach) and Marie Bigot (an esteemed Mendelssohn eagerly studied those amazing and dilettante and still exhibit the same sophisticat- manner of a rondo), while the two intervening Alsatian virtuoso and friend of Haydn and challenging creations. ed thematic manipulation and daring harmonic episodes treat the theme first in a minor-mode Beethoven). Mendelssohn’s first dated compo- The Quartet in A minor that Mendelssohn invention that mark his larger instrumental transformation and then through extended sition, a cantata, was completed on January 3, completed on October 26, 1827, was the product works of the time. The third and final group of motivic development (as in sonata form). The 1820, three weeks before his eleventh birthday, of this entire congeries of influences—Mozart, Haydn’s trios, comprising more than a third of disarming melodic and expressive purity of the though this piece was almost certainly preceded Bach, Beethoven, plus, of course, his own ge- his 45 works in the form, dates from the 1790s, second movement’s opening (“innocentemente” by others whose exact dates are not recorded. nius—which were further enflamed by a petite the years of his London ventures and his greatest urges the score) is countered by the audacity of Two years later began the twice-monthly Sunday affaire de le cœur. The previous spring, shortly international acclaim. its B major tonality, which shares not a single family concerts at the Mendelssohns’ Berlin before matriculating at Berlin University, The Piano Trio in E-flat major (XV:29 in diatonic note with the E-flat major home key of mansion, for which Felix selected the programs, Mendelssohn had indulged in a short holi- Hoboken’s catalog; H. C. Robbins Landon the Trio. The music becomes more anxious as it led the rehearsals, appeared as piano and violin day at Sakrow, the Magnus family estate near places it as No. 45, the last, in his chronologi- unfolds, drawing closer to Trio’s home tonality soloist and chamber musician, and even con- Potsdam, and there he fell in love, at least a little. cal listing of the trios) was composed soon af- by the end of the movement, but harmonic sta- ducted, though as a young teenager he was still The circumstances, even the maiden’s name, are ter Haydn left England for the second time, in bility is achieved again only with the start of the too short to be seen by the players in the back uncertain (one Betty Pistor, a family friend and 1795.

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