Eriesw• 1996 I---+-~::---T Thirty-Seventh Season - Ninth Concert
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Houston Friends ofMusic ~...-r-i The Shepherd School ofMusic / • USlC eriesw• 1996 i---+-~::---t Thirty-seventh Season - Ninth Concert BEAUXARTS TRIO Menahem Pressler, Piano Ida Kavafian, Violin Peter Wiley, Cello Stude Concert Hall Alice Pratt Brown Hall Rice University April 24, 1997 8:00 p.m. PROGRAM Franz Schubert Notturno in E-flat major, Op. 148 (D. 897) (1797-1828) Johannes Brahms Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87 (1833-1897) Allegro, animato Andante con moto Scherzo: Presto Finale: Allegro giocoso INTERMISSION Franz Schubert Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 99 (D. 898) (1797-1828) Allegro moderato Andante un poco mosso Scherzo: Allegro Rondo: Allegro vivace Columbia Artists Management Inc. Personal Direction: Michael Mushalla; Associate: Charles Letourneau 165 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019 Steinway Piano; Philips and Mercury Records PROGRAM NOTES Notturno in £-flat major, Op. 148 (D. 897) home key suggests a repeat of the exposition, but moves Franz Schubert instead into the expansive development. The traditional recapitualation of all the themes and an extensive coda he origins of the Notturno have been lost to bring the movement to its conclusion. T music history. The untitled piece, of which the original The slow movement, in A minor, is a set of variations. manuscript is kept in the Austrian National Library in The strings first present the main theme, a gypsy-like Vienna, was published in 1845 by Anton Diabelli, who arbi melody of marked Hungarian flavor, against an accompani trarily assigned it the opus number 148 and the title ment of off-beat chords in the piano. Brahms, as usual, Notturno (Nocturne). Twentieth century biographer and strictly retains the shape of the theme for each of the varia musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch has expounded the theory tions. The first, third, and fifth variations are based on the that this composition was penned in 1827 as the second or string melody, while the second and fourth variations are third movement of a projected trio that never reached com derived from the piano accompaniment of the original pletion. Another theory has it that the piece dates from theme. The last variation returns to the minor mode but 1825 and could have been originally intended as an inner converts the original theme into the 6/ 8 meter of the pre movement for the Trio in B-flat major, Op. 99 (D. 898), to ceding section before expanding into the quiet afterthought which it is· stylistically related. of the coda. This charming Adagio is composed of two themes Instead of the "joke" that the word "Scherzo" implies, developed in an A-B-A pattern. The work begins with the third movement is dark and shadowy, cast in C minor; an exposition of sustained tranquillity, is followed by its atmosphere was once likened to "an eerie rustling at a more active middle section, and ends with a brief twilight" by musicologist Peter Latham. When the lyrical codetta. music of the Trio section moves into the bright key of C Program notes courtesy of Columbia Artists Management major, the effect is all the stronger. The reprise of the scher Inc. zo, however, brings back the aura of mystery and bleak This is the second performance of this work on a Friends ness that was present at the beginning of the movement. of Music program; it was last played in October 1994 by the In total contrast to the Scherzo, the Finale, labeled gio Trio Fontenay. coso ("playful"), is good-natured and spirited; the intensity of the proceedings, however, preclude any humorous con Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87 tent. Two themes come into play: one expressive and Johannes Brahms impassioned, performed for the most part by the two strings together; the other, contrastingly lighter in character, lthough Brahms has often, and justly, been called playfully pitting the duple rhythm of the strings against the Athe last of the great classical composers, it is only the triplets of the piano. The exuberance of this movement most superficial listener who could deny that his music brings this masterful work to its brilliant conclusion. possesses qualities of the most intense Romanticism. The After a private run-through performance on August 29, richness and abundance of his musical genius poured forth 1882, at the home of the composer's friend Ignaz Brull, not only in his symphonies, but in his chamber works as Brahms's Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87, received its official well. premiere in Frankfurt on the 29th of December, with the During the summer of 1882, while vacationing in Isch!, composer at the piano. Brahms completed two major chamber compositions-the Program notes by Edgar Colon-Hernandez. magisterial C major trio and the joyous string quintet in F. This is the fifth performance of this work on a Friends of Actually, he had written the expansive first movement of Music program; it was last played by the Pacific Trio in the trio in March 1880, just before his first summer in Isch!. November 1995. In June 1882 he quickly finished the remaining three move ments. Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 99, D. 898 The Trio in C major, Op. 87, the second of three such works in that form by Brahms, was conceived on a large Franz Schubert scale of epic grandeur, combining Classical fluency with f the so-called "Viennese masters," only Schubert Romantic lyricism. Throughout much of the piece the piano O was actually born and raised in that city. Surprisingly, part is cast in such a heroic mold as to force the two string the composer of more than 600 art songs, or Lieder, and instruments to band together, playing in octaves or at least eleven sonatas for piano did not, for most of his creative in the same rhythm against the keyboard, yet resulting in a life, own a piano. A great deal of composing was done at a perfect balance between strings and piano. While the mas writing table, to be revised later at a borrowed piano in the terful working-out of the themes recalls the style of Haydn, home of a friend. the sonorities very often are close to those of Schubert's Schubert's music languished for most of the nineteenth piano trios; the character of the music, however, is all century, due to the widespread belief that the sonata was to Brahms's own. be found in the works of Beethoven, and Schubert's dis The main theme of the first movement is played at the tinctive style was looked upon as an anomaly. Although outset by the violin and cello in octaves; this theme is so only a tiny fraction of Schubert's music was published dur perfectly conceived for the strings that they play it at each ing his lifetime, his chamber music fills a comparatively of the major formal statements in the sonata-form move large space in his instrumental writing. The history of the ment. The sedate second theme, on the piano, has a rip unpublished manuscripts is extremely difficult to unravel; pling accompaniment in the left hand that becomes a third many gathered dust for decades on the shelves of his heirs subject in its own right. A climactic arrival back in the and publishers, while others passed obscurely from one private collector to another until they came into the public Greenhouse, the Trio has evolved from the replacement of domain. Robert Schumann wrote of the radiant and cheer Guilet in 1969 with violinist Isidore Cohen, and the replace ful B-flat major Trio, with its wealth of melodic beauty, ment of Greenhouse with cellist Peter Wiley in 1987. In rhythmic inventiveness, and rich Romantic harmonies: "One June 1992, the Trio made its debut with its newest addition, glance at Schubert's Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 99, and violinist Ida Kavafian, in two extraordinary performances of the troubles of our human existence disappear and all the Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Gewandhaus world is fresh and bright again." Orchestra of Leipzig under Maestro Kurt Masur. The first movement (Allegro moderato) opens with an The Beaux Arts Trio's mark in American culture is far exultant melody played in octaves by violin and cello while reaching. The ensemble has played a major and ongoing the piano adds a simple accompaniment. An ascending role in the programs of important cultural and educational chromatic scale on the piano leads to the cello holding a centers throughout North America, with annual concert high pitch, after which the tender second subject is played series at such revered institutions as the Metropolitan first by the cello alone, then the violin and cello together, Museum of Art in New York, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and finally by the piano. The development section which and the Library of Congress, where the Trio is in residence. follows is lengthy but beautiful, with the two subjects ele The Trio's engagements at major North American music fes gantly varied and combined. The recapitulation recalls the tivals include Mostly Mozart, Caramoor, Ravinia, and opening with very little departure. Tanglewood. The Trio's annual international engagements The cello is frequently called upon in the second move include appearances at the festivals of Edinburgh, Lucerne, ment (Andante un poco mosso) to play in its uppermost Vienna, Helsinki, Warsaw, Hong Kong, and Israel, as well · range. After two measures, during which the piano indi as performances in the chamber music series of the world's cates the rhythm, the cello plays an expressive sustained major foreign cities.