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PROGRAM NOTESNothing could be more distant from the burgeoning musical palette of today than the cool 18th-century trio medium with only two string lines and a piano line furnishing the texture. Yet it remains one of the wonders of Haydn that within this restrained mold he gave us warm flesh-and blood music whose themes remain with us long after the actual playing. Haydn left 31 trios for piano, violin, and cello; the works span the last 40 years of his life. The E-flat Trio has a courtly origin, being written for Theresa Bartolozzi (née Jansen), a young piano virtuoso, a student of the famous Clementi, and a very successful London teacher. It may be noted without comment that 14 of the 31 Haydn piano trios were dedicated to women. The piano of Haydn's day was not the behemoth we know today, but a much smaller instrument with a four- octave range and a shallower tone, although with a very clear timbre, especially in its upper register. The 18th-century world of CPE Bach and Mozart, with its emphasis on lines rather than massive chordal effects, found perfect expression on such an instrument, and the Haydn trio is no exception. A solemn E-flat chord introduces the first movement, a loose variation form on a rococco-like theme, with all the rhythmic curls and twists we would expect from the galant framing. The second movement, in the rather foreign key of B major, is an example of the warm, expressive world Haydn often evoked in the slow movements of his symphonies. Toward the end of the movement, the B major tonality melts away in the original E-flat key of the first movement. The third movement, marked "in the German style" is a jaunty, ländler-like dance, and a perfect down-to-earth close for the entire work.
There are 33 houses in Vienna and its suburbs where Ludwig van Beethoven lived and worked for (usually) brief periods between his arrival in the city in November 1792 and his death there. One of these was a room in the spacious apartment of the Hungarian Gräfin (Countess) and accomplished pianist Maria von Erdödy where he composed his two Opus 70 piano trios in the autumn of 1808. When he published them a year later he dedicated them to Countess Erdödy. The D Major trio is structured like a musical arch, the two outside movements being simple and direct in style with the high point being the middle movement, the somewhat spooky-sounding Largo which gives the work its subtitle. The first movement opens with a forceful rhythmic figure played in unison by all three instruments. This is followed by a two-measure cantabile phrase in the cello soon taken up by the others. After elaborating on this latter motif, the piano introduces the second subject which is played over rolling scale-like figures in the strings. The opening piano figure of the Largo comes from Beethoven's sketches for the witches' scene in Macbeth for which he was planning an opera (never completed) at the time. Set off by solemn figures in the strings, the theme very effectively casts a mood of tension and suspense. Following this melancholy mood in the Largo, the Finale projects a warmth and brightness that offers a sense of relief and regained composure.
The A minor Piano Trio was the only work written by Tchaikovsky for piano and strings. In 1880 his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, had asked for such a piece, and he had refused, saying in a letter to her on 5 November 1880, "I cannot endure the combination of piano with violin or cello. To my mind the timbre of these instruments will not blend ... it is torture for me to have to listen to a string trio or a sonata of any kind for piano and strings. To my mind, the piano can be effective in only three situations: alone, in context with the orchestra, or as an accompaniment, i.e., the background of a picture." However, in March of 1881 Nikolai Rubinstein, one of Russia's foremost pianists and pedagogues and Tchaikovsky's most important professional and personal mentor died. Tchaikovsky determined to create a work in his memory, something with a prominent piano part in honor of Rubinstein as pianist, and he wrote to von Meck on 27 December 1881 saying, "in spite of this antipathy (to this combination of instruments) I am thinking of experimenting with this sort of music, which so far I have not touched." He finished the trio in 1882 and in a letter to von Meck on 20 January 1882 wrote saying, "I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio, instead of writing directly for the instruments. I have tried to avoid this, but I am not sure whether I have been successful." The trio is in two large movements -- the first in sonata form with a prominent piano part and the second consisting of a theme and an extended set of variations with a finale starting out as another variation on the theme and concluding with a return to the melancholy opening theme of the first movement followed by a funeral march. Alfred Einstein in Music in the Romantic Era (1947) characterizes the work as "a classic example of his (Tchaikovsky's) boundless emotionalism" and "a veritable orgy of sequences and naked feelings." To other ears, the trio is superb -- warm and passionate, filled with Tchaikovsky's broad and lovely melodies, in marked contrast to the sterility of much of the music following in the 20th Century.
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