On Sunday afternoon I went again to Juilliard's Morse Hall to hear this week's 1:00 p.m. chamber recital. The first half of the program was devoted to twentieth century works by Bohuslav Martinů and Jacques Ibert while the second half featured a classic piano trio by Brahms.
The program opened with Martinů's Promenades for Flute, Violin and Harpshichord (1939). One doesn't usually associate Martinů with the harpsichord. Influenced by the music of Debussy, he had left his native Czechoslovakia in the 1920's with the intention of studying modern music in Paris. Accordingly, all through that decade and the next he experimented with the most progressive musical forms then available. What is one then to make of this work with its clear allusions to the Baroque era? For one thing, Martinů had in Paris made the acquaintance of the renowned flutist Marcel Moyse and it was for his trio that Martinů composed this and several other works, though this was the only one to make use of a harpsichord rather than a piano. It's an obviously modern work but still retains a definite French flavor that calls to mind the works of Lully and other seventeenth century composers.
The next work was Ibert's Deux Interludes for Flute, Violin and Harpshichord (1946). Ibert is an extremely difficult composer to categorize. During his long career he experimented with a number of styles and combinations of instruments. He composed this short piece in his native Paris several years after having returned from Switzerland where he had fled to escape the Nazi occupation. It didn't seem that Ibert was in any way attempting to evoke the Baroque era in this piece but rather that he was including the harpsichord in the instrumentation for its unique sound.
Both the above pieces were performed by the same musicians - Mi-Li Chang, flute, Sara Bauman, violin, and Katarzyna Kluczykowska, piano. Their coaches were Curtis Macomber and Robert Mealy. I was a bit surprised that these works would be coached by Mr. Mealy, who as program director of the Juilliard415 normally concerns himself only with music of the Baroque era, but I assume he was needed here for his expertise on the harpsichord.
After a brief pause the recital ended with a performance of Brahms's Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8 (1854, revised 1889). The trio was originally composed in 1854 when Brahms was only 21 years old and only a year after he had first become acquainted with the composer Robert Schumann and his wife Clara, without question the most significant encounter of his musical career. Brahms wrote the greater portion of the trio in Hanover, where he had been visiting the famed violinist Joseph Joachim in the company of the Schumanns, and then completed it shortly after the couple had returned to Düsseldorf. Unfortunately, almost immediately upon his return home, Robert, who had suffered from severe depression for most of his life, attempted suicide by trying to drown himself in the Rhine. Brahms rushed to Clara's side and helped her place Robert in an asylum in Bonn where he remained until his death at age 46 only two years later. Under these circumstances, it would be interesting to know if either Joachim or the Schumanns had any direct influence on the composition of the work. Certainly, there were some evident connections. For example, Brahms had inscribed at the top of the score the words "Kreisler junior." This was a reference to a fictional character created by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a widely read critic and author of fantastic stories. Schumann had found inspiration from this same character in his 1838 piano cycle Kreisleriana, Op. 16.
On the recommendation of Clara to Breitkopf und Härtel, the trio was the first of Brahms's chamber works to be published. (For that matter, it was his first piece to be played in the U.S. when in November 1855 it was given its American premiere in New York by the pianist William Mason.) When Simrock took over the publication of Brahms's works in 1889 the firm gave the composer the opportunity to revise any he so chose. Brahms took advantage of the offer to extensively revise the Op. 8 trio in spite of his famous remark that his intention had been "not to stick a wig on it but merely to comb its hair a little." The thrust of the revisions was to tone down Brahms's youthful Romanticism in favor of the more restrained style of his mature works. What's most remarkable about the revision, however, is that Brahms did not withdraw the earlier version from publication but instead left both available. Considering what a perfectionist Brahms was (he is reported to have destroyed some twenty string quartets before allowing the two Op. 51 quartets to be published and then only after having made extensive revisions following a private performance), it is astonishing that he would allow continued publication of an earlier version of whose deficiencies he felt so strongly that he took the time after the lapse of so many years to correct them. One can only assume that the older Brahms felt a strong degree of nostalgia for the passionate Romantic he had once been. Perhaps too the fact that the work's initial composition had been so intimately connected with Brahms's first meeting with his beloved Clara had created an emotional attachment in his mind that he was unwilling to let go.
The performers on this last piece were Tal First, violin, Ayoun Alexandra Kim, cello, and Natalie Nedvetsky, piano. Their coach was Joseph Lin, first violinist with the Juilliard Quartet and director of the Honors Chamber Music program.
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