On Friday I returned to Paul Hall to hear another installment of this season's Chamberfest. There were only two works on the program, both of them piano trios, by Mendelssohn and Schubert.
The program opened with Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49 (1839) performed by Pinhua Zeng, violin; Yifei Li, cello; Jiaqi Long, piano; and coached by Jonathan Feldman and Cathy Cho.
I had just heard Mendelssohn's second trio, the Op. 66, on Wednesday evening and so had an opportunity to experience both pieces virtually back to back. It's unusual to hear Mendelssohn played with such frequency. While musicians correctly maintain that the composer's genius is underrated, audiences, though they may not argue the point, often remain aloof. I think one reason for this lack of appreciation is that Mendelssohn's works are so highly polished, so "perfect" if you will, that little trace of the composer himself remains within them. It is impossible, for example, to listen to any of Beethoven's late quartets without being constantly aware of the genius standing behind them, almost as if he were physically present in the room with the listener. Mendelssohn's works, on the other hand, can be strangely anonymous. Part of this may have to do with the composer's lack of a distinctive personality. Whatever passions he had, he kept them to himself. Every account by his contemporaries stresses what a perfect gentlemen he was, invariably temperate, good natured and smiling. Spending more than ten minutes in such a person's company must have been a maddening experience. Another reason may have been the great wealth of Mendelssohn's family. His resources allowed him to place artistic excellence, according to his own standards, over commercial success. Accordingly, he did not feel as pressing a need as other composers to cater to the tastes of his audience.
Having said all this, the two chamber works by Mendelssohn that never lost their popularity were his Octet, Op. 20, and the D minor trio. In the trio's case, a dissertation by Ron Regev suggests that Mendelssohn may have cared more about his audience's reaction to this work than to others. Regev writes:
"On the other hand, the undertone of some of his [Mendessohn's] letters, as well as the final outcome of his debate with Hiller concerning the Trio suggests that he was not impervious to the lure of public affection."
It was Ferdinand Hiller, of course, who persuaded Mendelssohn to completely rewrite the piano part to bring it more into accord with popular tastes. He later recalled:
"Certain pianoforte passages in it [the trio], constructed on broken chords, seemed to me - to speak candidly - somewhat old-fashioned. I had lived may years in Paris, seeing Liszt frequently, and Chopin every day, so that I was thoroughly accustomed to the richness of passages which marked the new pianoforte school. I made some observations to Mendelssohn on this point, suggesting certain alterations, but at first he would not listen to me."
In his paper, Regev goes on to do an exhaustive analysis of all the changes Mendelssohn made in his revised score. To whatever extent these changes altered the nature of the work, the final result is certainly much more stirring than can be found in many other of Mendelssohn's pieces. From the cello's opening notes on, the trio captures the hearts of its audience. One cannot listen without being moved. The wonderful rendition by the Juilliard musicians, and pianist Jiaqi Long in particular, made this a truly memorable performance.
The second and final work on the program was Schubert's Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, D. 929 (1827) performed by Chelsea Kim, violin; Issei Herr, cello; Yuchong Wu, piano. Their coaches, Joseph Kalichstein and Fred Sherry, are both accomplished chamber musicians and well known to New York audiences.
Schubert wrote only two trios, one right after the other in 1827 (although some scholars have disputed this chronology). After having claimed the E flat his favorite of the two, he dedicated the work to "no one, save those who find pleasure in it." It's an enormous piece, so much so that Schubert was convinced by his publisher to cut 98 bars from the final movement. What's surprising is that Schubert arrived at this genre so late in his career. Aside from a short fragment written while still a student of Salieri, the composer never before attempted this combination of instruments even with the example of Beethoven's "Ghost" and "Archduke" trios before him. It may have been a question of finding the right musicians. The first performance was a private one given by Carl Maria von Bocklet, piano, Ignaz Schuppanzigh, violin, and Josef Linke, cello. The latter two had played at the premiere of the "Archduke" trio in 1814 with Beethoven himself at the keyboard. The thought of having these two musicians perform his own trio could not but have encouraged Schubert to begin work on his own opus.
The E flat is of a much different character than the B flat. While the latter is predominantly genial in tone, the former is suffused with a sense of gentle melancholy, most especially in the slow second movement which is said to have been based on a Swedish folk song. The same sad theme returns in the final movement and this time the sense it projects is one of intense yearning. The effect is mesmerizing.
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