Monday, December 12, 2016

Juilliard Chamber Music: Mozart and Tchaikovsky

There were three pieces on the program for yesterday's 3:00 p.m. chamber recital at Morse Hall, but in the event only two were performed.  No reason was given why Handel's Trio Sonata No. 8 was canceled, but my own best guess would be that some hapless student failed to take into account the amount of time needed to navigate the NYC subway system on weekends.  Luckily, the two remaining works on the program were both major pieces and well worth hearing.

The recital began with Mozart's Piano Trio in E-flat major, K. 498 (1786) for piano, clarinet and viola.  Long after Mozart's death, the work was given the nickname Kegelstatt by the music's publishers who most likely confused it with the K. 487 composed a month earlier on whose score Mozart had noted that it had been written while playing skittles.  Since it made for a good story, the unlikely name stuck.  Far more important is the work's place to the clarinet repertoire.  At the time, the clarinet was a relatively new instrument.  Haydn only began to make use of it in 1793 when he composed his Symphony No. 99 in preparation for his second London tour.  Probably he viewed it as a novelty that would delight English audiences.  The clarinet might not have made so prominent an appearance in Mozart's later work if it hadn't been for his friendship with Anton Stadler, a dissolute character who was nevertheless the world's first true clarinet virtuoso performing on an instrument of his own design.  As it is, the trio is the first work written for this particular combination of instruments.  The occasion was a private performance at the home of Mozart's friend Nikolaus von Jacquin to whose daughter Mozart had dedicated the work.  The musicians were most likely said daughter Franziska Jacquin on piano, Stadler playing clarinet and Mozart himself performing the viola part.  The composer did not shortchange his friends.  This is one of his finest chamber works and contains several interesting features from the highly unusual use of an andante as an opening movement to the seven part rondo that closes the piece.  The trio was performed here by Philip Solomon, clarinet, Andrea Fortier, viola, and Anran Qian, piano.  They were coached by Lara Lev and Jerome Lowenthal.

The second and final work on the shortened program was Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50 (1882).  The Op. 50 was the only piano trio Tchaikovsky ever wrote.  He might not have even written that one had he not been implored to do so by his patroness Nadezhda von Meck.  At first, as their correspondence reveals, the composer demurred but provided an surprising reason for having done so.  He wrote:
"I simply 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."
And yet, only a year later, Tchaikovsky was hard at work on the piece though he still harbored doubts as to its eventual success that he did not hesitate to communicate to von Meck.  What's most interesting, though, is that when the work was finally completed, Tchaikovsky did not in fact dedicate it to his patroness but instead supplied the subtitle "In memory of a great artist" when sending it to his publisher Jurgenson.  This was a reference to Nikolai Rubinstein who had died several months before in March 1881. The two men had been close colleagues and Rubinstein, a co-founder of the Moscow Conservatory, had once hired Tchaikovsky to teach harmony there.  He had also championed Tchaikovsky's music against the attacks of a group of ultra-nationalist Russian composers known as "The Mighty Handful" who had found the composer's music too Westernized for their taste.  Nevertheless, there had been occasional differences between the two.  Most famously, Rubinstein had in 1874 emphatically rejected Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto but then had later reconsidered his position and gone on to conduct the work.  

The structure of the trio itself is highly unusual.  It consists of two long movements.  The first, pezzo elegiaco, opens with a cello solo and contains a beautifully lyrical theme and funeral march that could well be considered the epitome of Russian romanticism.  The second movement is a set of twelve variations and coda that at the end repeats the mournful theme from the first movement.  

The work was first performed in the composer's absence at the Moscow Conservatory in March 1882 on the first anniversary of Rubinstein's death.  In April, after Tchaikovsky had returned from Rome where he had written the piece, another private performance was held in the composer's presence.  Tchaikovsky took advantage of the opportunity to make a number of changes to the score.  Finally, in October, the revised work received its public premiere at the Russian Musical Society with Sergei Taneyev playing the piano part. 

The musicians at this performance were Kenneth Liao, violin, Seth Biagini, cello, and Aileen Gozali, piano; the coaches were Joseph Kalichstein and Darrett Adkins.

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