​KNOXVILLE
CHAMBER MUSIC
SOCIETY

PROGRAM NOTES

 

[The following program notes are attributed to Melvin Berger.]

 

In a June 17, 1788 letter to his friend, fellow Mason and benefactor, Michael Puchberg, Mozart added the postscript: “When shall we have another little music-making at your house?  I have written a new trio!”  He was referring to the Piano Trio in E major, which he actually finished five days later, on June 22.  The trio came just before the three great final symphonies; it finds Mozart at the very height of his powers.  One indication that he recognized the trio’s outstanding quality was his decision to play it at the Court of Dresden the following year when he was hoping for an appointment there.  And the fact is that others appreciated its worth, too.  Chopin, for example, made it a practice decades later, to open all of his trio concerts with Mozart’s E major.  In this trio, Mozart creates some less-than-inspired themes yet, by working his musical magic, fashions them into a work of radiant beauty and great inner joy. 

 

The principal theme of the Allegro, stated by the piano, is rather static, as compared with the usual flow of Mozart melodies, and the transition, a little phrase that moves back and forth between the violin and piano, is not much better.  The second theme is more appealing, with a nice lilt and a pleasing contour.  After the violin and piano statements (in B major), the drama is heightened by the drastic and exciting modulation (to G major) for the cello’s turn at the tune.  During the remainder of the movement Mozart treats us to a succession of intriguing harmonic and melodic touches that raise the Allegro far above its rather humble origins.

 

A single folklike theme prevails throughout the fresh and charming Andante grazioso.  Music scholar Alfred Einstein described the movement, in which the solo piano alternates with tutti passages, as “poetic and pastoral, like a Watteau.”  The wonder, though, is not the quality of the melody as much as Mozart’s miraculous, but subtle transformations of the basic theme, making this a very special, hauntingly beautiful movement.  

 

Mozart wrote out sixty-five measures of a restless, agitated finale before he stopped, started again, and composed the present version, with its simple relaxed melody that is so like a nursery song.  It is a glittering movement in combined sonata and rondo form in which he introduces sections of sharply contrasting character and mood and provides ever-fascinating melodic and harmonic changes.  Part of the movement’s compelling brilliance comes from the many virtuosic passages for the piano and violin.  

 

Anton Arensky was a composer, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and music director of the Imperial Chapel in Saint Petersburg.  His music is particularly interesting for the traces one hears in it of the two opposing streams that flowed so vigorously in late nineteenth-century Russian music.  One influence was Rimsky-Korsakov, Arensky’s teacher at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, and a member of The Five, the group of nationalistic Russian composers who strongly advocated the use of native folk melodies and rhythms in concert music and rejected the view that folk music is not a fit subject for serious musical composition.  The other was Tchaikovsky, who was far less concerned with expressing the Russian national character and declared that his music was modeled on the style of Mozart and the Italian opera composers.  

 

Arensky is not generally considered an important figure in the history of music.  Yet his First Piano Trio is among the more popular and appealing works in the chamber music repertoire.  Little is known about the circumstances of its composition beyond the fact that he wrote it in 1894 and dedicated it to the memory of Karl Davidoff, first cellist of the Saint Petersburg Opera and later director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

 

Over a murmuring triplet figure in the piano, the violin sings a flowing first theme that seems to have drawn its inspiration from Tchaikovsky.  After an agitated transition, the cello is entrusted with the somewhat more vocal second theme.  The tempo picks up for the forceful, vigorous concluding theme of the exposition.  The following, richly Romantic development section is mostly concerned with the opening theme.  The recapitulation brings back all three themes, little changed from the exposition.  A slow, quiet coda, really an augmentation of the principal theme, fades out at the end.  

 

The Scherzo pits a florid, virtuosic piano part against extremely spare writing for the strings.  A folk influence can be heard in the slightly slower middle section, a lilting waltz with a Slavonic cast.  Here the piano is relegated to the role of accompanist as the strings weave their strands of sound into the appealing waltz melody.  The movement is rounded off with a slightly expanded return of the Scherzo.  

 

The center of gravity of the entire trio is the Elegia, the movement in which Arensky specifically pays homage of Davidoff.  Both strings are muted, giving them an attractive, veiled dark tone color.  The tempo increases, and the mood brightens for the middle part of the movement.  For the reprise of the opening, the original tempo resumes.  

 

Lively and rhythmic, the Finale explodes in a burst of sound.  The quieter second theme seems to be a transformation of the Elegia’s main theme.  Toward the end, the tempo slows for a reminder of the first movement theme, before concluding with a fast, brilliant coda.