Sitkovetsky Trio - Alexander Sitkovetsky violin,
Leonard Elschenbroich cello, Wu Qian piano   

Brahms: Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87
Haydn: Piano Trio No. 39 in G major Hob. XV/25 (‘Gypsy’)

Piano Trio No 2 in C, Op 87                               Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
1. Allegro; 2. Andante con moto; 3. Scherzo. Presto; 4. Finale. Allegro giocoso.

With the C major Piano Trio Brahms returned to a genre which he had not tackled since the B major work, Op. 8, some twenty years before. He began sketching the first movement, together with one for a trio in E flat, in 1880. He played them both to Clara Schumann, but despite her preference for the E flat piece, he abandoned it. Two years later he took up the C major Trio again, and it was first heard at a private performance in August that year.

The medium of the piano trio poses problems of balance between the piano and the strings. To guard against this Brahms often treats the violin and cello as a single unit, with many passages in octaves or thirds. All four movements open in this way, the first with a sturdy, powerful theme which will be expanded by the cello into a graceful waltz-tune at the climax of the development, and again at the start of the expansive coda. The piano has the second main theme, marked by typically Brahmsian syncopations.

The andante is a theme and five variations. Brahms jokingly suggested to his publisher that this justified an extra fee, since variations were what the public had come to expect of him. Both the strings’ theme, with its ‘scotch-snap’ (short-long) rhythm, and the piano’s syncopated accompaniment, are subjected to variation treatment.

The third movement inhabits a shadowy, half-lit region which recalls both the equivalent movement of Schubert’s G major String Quartet and Mendelssohn’s characteristic scherzo manner. The fairies of A Midsummernight’s Dream were never as sinister as this, however, and it is almost a relief when the trio section breaks in with its broad, singing melody spanning some two-and-a-half octaves. The reprise of the scherzo peters out mysteriously.

The finale, like the first movement, is a sonata structure with a profusion of themes and an enormoucoda. The singing opening melody and the piano’s accompanying repeated-note figure are both extensively treated. At the very end of the movement the opening theme, transformed into a falling chain of thirds, and performs a spectacular scissors-movement together with its inversion (the same idea rising), across the entire range of the instruments to provide a triumphant conclusion.

Piano Trio no 39 in G, Hob. XV:25                                Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
1. Andante; 2. Poco adagio. Cantabile; 3. Rondo all’Ongarese. Presto.

Haydn’s piano trios have long been one of his most neglected groups of works, though this situation has been steadily improving in recent years. They grew out of the repertoire of mid-eighteenth century chamber music in which the keyboard part tended to predominate, with violin parts treated as accompaniments, or even as dispensable altogether. As late as the 1780s and 90s Haydn’s trios were still being advertised as ‘Sonatas for harpsichord or Forte-piano with a violin and violoncello’. In these later works the keyboard is still the dominant partner, and though the violin has more of an independent part, the cello tends to do little more than double the keyboard player’s left hand.

The G major Trio (No. 25 in Anthony van Hoboken’s catalogue, No 39 in the more recent and more comprehensive one by Christa Landon) belongs to a group of three which were published in London in September 1795, just before Haydn left England at the end of his second and final visit. They were dedicated to Rebecca Schröter, widow of Johann Samuel Schröter (1750-1788), who had succeeded Johann Christian Bach as Master of the King's Music in 1782. She became a close friend of Haydn during his stay, and he would happily have married her had he been free to do so.

The trio was an immediate success, and is still by far the most popular of the series, largely because of its lively finale, the so-called ‘Gypsy Rondo’. The opening andante is a theme and four variations. The first is in G minor; the third, in E minor, gives the violinist a chance to shine as a soloist, and the last is a virtuoso piece for the piano. The second movement is simple and song-like, based on one of Haydn’s loveliest melodic inspirations. After two slowish movements an outburst of high spirits is called for, and Haydn provides a deft and witty finale which races along to its conclusion without once pausing for breath.

© Mike Wheeler, 2010