CM Notes » ATOS Trio
ATOS Trio
February 21, 2010
Piano Trio in C major opus 1, number 1 Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 – 1827
Beethoven had already moved to Vienna when he wrote this trio in 1793/4. It was commissioned by Prince Lichnowsky. While still in Bonn he had written more than a dozen journeyman works but this is the first one to which he gave an opus number. It marks the beginning of his official output.
Count Waldstein in Bonn was crucial in promoting Beethoven’s career. He made sure the archbishop of Cologne, the Prince Elector, supported Beethoven when he had a chance to go to Vienna and study with Haydn. Haydn had come through Bonn on one of his tours and Beethoven’s friends showed him a cantata the young man had written. Haydn liked it.
In Vienna Beethoven also studied with Albrechtsberger. Before that he had absorbed the teaching of Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel and other North German masters. Given this solid base, Haydn’s pedagogic methods led to a very polished construction in all the works which followed.
They did not get on too well, with Beethoven complaining about his master. Haydn had the very highest opinion of his difficult student but Beethoven found fault in various ways. Some of it had to do with the fact that Haydn was travelling a lot that year. Beethoven did not reveal his feelings at the time but years later said some very harsh things about Haydn. They were not completely baseless. Haydn set young Ludwig exercises in harmony and counterpoint but was rather cavalier about correcting them, at least in the written specimens which have survived.
Modern psycho-babble suggests a basic incompatibility over the significance of Haydn as a father figure. Haydn had no children and wanted to be loved by the young. Beethoven had had enough of fathers for one lifetime and withheld the needed displays of affection and devotion. There was also a rather nasty episode in which Beethoven either intentionally or not led Haydn to believe he had no more money whereas in fact he had a reasonable supply.
Curiously Beethoven always felt he lacked a really comprehensive musical education. There is a record of his remark that if only he had had Mozart’s advantages what a truly great composer he might have become!
The trio, opus 1, shows that even at an early stage Beethoven was his own man. One could make the error of approaching it in a somewhat condescending manner, only to be very much mistaken. This piece is not late Mozart or middle Haydn. It is already pure Beethoven.
The cello ceases to be deferential to the piano bass and comes into its own very soon after the opening section. Beethoven threw out the minuet from the beginning, replacing it with a Scherzo. Even this is cast in a new form. It opens with the two strings playing a duo alone. The Trio is played completely in pianissimo, another innovation. In the Finale the piano opens with a fine swinging theme, and is then joined by the other two instruments.
The piano trio was given its usually accepted form by Haydn. He rescued it from the various “trio sonatas” with cello obligato which preceded it. Innovation and increasing complexity characterize his vast output. Beethoven took it to the next level. Even the fact that he chose to use four movements rather than merely three is important. He had a lot to say. One sees the onset of symphonic power even in this early work.
Haydn himself was a bit disturbed by the boldness of the first three trios. Like Mozart, he was very well attuned to the taste of the public and knew just how far he could go. While he admired this rugged new style he was concerned it might not go over very well in Vienna’s conservative salons. He need not have worried. Beethoven succeeded.
Piano Trio in C major (1926) Gaspar Cassadó 1897 - 1966
Gaspar Cassadó was one of the last exponents of a great tradition, the soloist cum composer. Liszt was its personification. Rachmaninoff did it perforce out of necessity and Fritz Kreisler enjoyed using his compositional skills to hoodwink and mystify his audiences. Severe and puritanical critics consider what Kreisler did to be forgery. Other more tolerant people were amused at his effrontery. Cassadó had some of Kreisler’s sense of mischief.
Whenever his name comes up one always thinks of his arrangement of the Frescobaldi Toccata but it turns out that one is wrong. Frescobaldi had nothing to do with it. Cassadó transcribed numerous major works for cello but the “Frescobaldi” was pure invention on his part. In the first half of the twentieth century when his career was at its peak it was possible to get away with minor peccadillos of this sort. Authenticity was not yet the rule.
In 1978 the musicologist Walter Schenkman did a careful analysis of the piece’s style and he realized that much of the Cassado “transcription” was anachronistic. If anything it sounded more like Handel.
Tragically Cassadó’s glowing reputation wavered and sank as a result of his actions during the Second World War. It is a sad dark story, putting even some of Pablo Casals’ behavior into an uncertain light. Cassadó lived in Italy during the war and Casals led the charge of collaboration. There is little evidence that he did anything reprehensible but the accusation was enough. Impresarios ceased to book him and he languished for years. At worst he was guilty of political naiveté, continuing to do business as usual while Casals took the high moral ground and refused to play in any Axis country. Eventually Yehudi Menuhin, who had remained friends with both men, effected a reconciliation.
Cassadó was born into a musical family in Barcelona. His father recognized the immense talent of two of his children and in 1907, moved the family to Paris. The city of Barcelona supported their education with scholarships. Casals was too busy giving concerts to take many pupils but when he heard the 10 year old Cassadó play he agreed to teach him. Wilhemina Suggia was one of the two other lucky pupils. Gaspar’s brother Agustin Cassadó studied the violin with Jacques Thibaud.
The young Gaspar was devoted to his teacher, looking upon him with awe and affection. They stayed close until the rift caused by politics many years later became insurmountable. Cassado later wrote about his studies with Casals, emphasizing how he learned to make each performance fresh by burrowing deeply into the music itself every time he played it.
While the family was still in Paris the father formed a trio with his two sons, giving many concerts. The onset of World War I forced them to return to Barcelona. Agustin died of influenza soon afterwards and Gaspar branched out alone as a soloist. At first he was renowned only in Spain but soon developed an international reputation. He began to compose, but told people it was only a hobby. This modest front barely covered his true feelings. During his heyday he always played at least one of his own pieces at his recitals.
It is not surprising he wanted to compose. His father set him an example by writing him a cello concerto for his first important orchestral concert in Spain. As part of his training in Paris Cassadó studied composition with Maurice Ravel and Manuel de Falla.
Cassadó preferred to live in Florence but in the summer of 1926 he spent some time in Berlin. There he was introduced to Albert Einstein, an enthusiastic if somewhat limited amateur violinist and Robert Mendelssohn’s wife, the gifted pianist Giulletta Gordigiani. (Robert Mendelssohn was a descendant of Felix Mendelssohn.)
The trio is said to have been written for the three of them to play. Both his masters’ influence shows up in the trio. The work had its first public performance in 1929, in Paris.
“ The first movement is in sonata-allegro form, and features three different principal tempi. Cassadó uses the differences in tempo to underline changes in mood and character in the music. The strict framework of the form does not prevent Cassadó from introducing elements of Spanish folk music from time to time. The movement’s grand scale and big gestures often make the listener think of Brahms.”
“ The Spanish elements which were largely in the background in the first movement move front and center in the second. All the melodic material sounds like folk music, and the middle section of the movement features cadenza-like passages where the violin and then the cello seem to be improvising in the manner of a flamenco singer.’
“The final movement begins with a slow, passionate introduction, where the violin and cello play in octaves, once again evoking flamenco music. The fast, virtuosic movement which follows combines playful folk-like melodies with whole-tone scales, and races to a dramatic, exciting finish.” (© Nathaniel Chaitkin, 2002)
Piano Trio in B major opus 8 Johannes Brahms 1833 - 1897
Brahms wrote five trios altogether, three for the standard combination of piano, violin and cello, the others with a French horn and or clarinet replacing one of the instruments. The piano trio opus 8 came very early when he was only about 20 years old, soon after he met the Schumanns. Schumann’s extravagant praise left him vulnerable to malicious reviews and Vienna’s critics were out there with their long knives, waiting for fresh meat.
Take for example Adolf Schubring. Schubring had a very prominent voice in musical affairs at the time. He was not too unreasonable. If he thought something was well done he was happy to say so but if it were not his remarks were biting. In 1862, he devoted several papers to Brahms’ music in Schumanniana: Johannes Brahms.
“No more than in the (C major piano) sonata is Brahms able to give the first movement of his first trio any unified shape. The same factors contribute to the failure: the padded counterpoint and the overloaded polyphony – and then chiefly from the error that he draws from the main theme contrasting ideas that repel each other.” Ouch! He went on to say that the second group had a “crabbed, grating” quality. Schubring did warm up a bit to other parts of the piece but to a sensitive man like Brahms this must have been torture.
Many years later, in 1889, Brahms revised the trio and it is the revised edition which is usually played nowadays. There is little in common between the two versions beyond the first 60 bars.
In an interval of almost 40 years Brahms broadened and deepened intellectually as well as a musician. When very young he had to earn money to help support the family and he could not continue his education. He was always a little sensitive about this. To overcome this shortcoming Brahms read very widely and was interested in science and 19th century progress.
His father had taught him the violin at first because they could not afford a piano. First hand knowledge of the range and sonorities of the violin in relation to those of the piano guided Brahms when he came to write chamber music.
Brahms’ talent was so manifestly above that of the musicians around him that the fierce battles between the Romantics (clustered about Liszt) and the classicists who claimed him as one of their own left him unmoved. He never spoke unkindly about Wagner or Liszt and deeply admired their work.
The trio is in four movements, with the Scherzo coming before the Adagio, not a completely radical departure but still a trifle unconventional. The key is more unusual. It is hard to play in a key with 5 sharps. The first theme in the tonic key is broadly lyrical and is fully developed. In the Scherzo, one hears echoes of Beethoven’s crispness and bright movement. The Trio is very melodic and has considerable tremolo.
In the slow movement a chorale-like figure is treated antiphonally. The Finale is in B minor, rather remote from the opening key but still very convincing. It has two principal themes. The first is tightly controlled and very rhythmic. The second is more flowing, and as Cohn puts it, “more outpoured, long sailing and full winded”.
February 21, 2010
Piano Trio in C major opus 1, number 1 Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 – 1827
Beethoven had already moved to Vienna when he wrote this trio in 1793/4. It was commissioned by Prince Lichnowsky. While still in Bonn he had written more than a dozen journeyman works but this is the first one to which he gave an opus number. It marks the beginning of his official output.
Count Waldstein in Bonn was crucial in promoting Beethoven’s career. He made sure the archbishop of Cologne, the Prince Elector, supported Beethoven when he had a chance to go to Vienna and study with Haydn. Haydn had come through Bonn on one of his tours and Beethoven’s friends showed him a cantata the young man had written. Haydn liked it.
In Vienna Beethoven also studied with Albrechtsberger. Before that he had absorbed the teaching of Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel and other North German masters. Given this solid base, Haydn’s pedagogic methods led to a very polished construction in all the works which followed.
They did not get on too well, with Beethoven complaining about his master. Haydn had the very highest opinion of his difficult student but Beethoven found fault in various ways. Some of it had to do with the fact that Haydn was travelling a lot that year. Beethoven did not reveal his feelings at the time but years later said some very harsh things about Haydn. They were not completely baseless. Haydn set young Ludwig exercises in harmony and counterpoint but was rather cavalier about correcting them, at least in the written specimens which have survived.
Modern psycho-babble suggests a basic incompatibility over the significance of Haydn as a father figure. Haydn had no children and wanted to be loved by the young. Beethoven had had enough of fathers for one lifetime and withheld the needed displays of affection and devotion. There was also a rather nasty episode in which Beethoven either intentionally or not led Haydn to believe he had no more money whereas in fact he had a reasonable supply.
Curiously Beethoven always felt he lacked a really comprehensive musical education. There is a record of his remark that if only he had had Mozart’s advantages what a truly great composer he might have become!
The trio, opus 1, shows that even at an early stage Beethoven was his own man. One could make the error of approaching it in a somewhat condescending manner, only to be very much mistaken. This piece is not late Mozart or middle Haydn. It is already pure Beethoven.
The cello ceases to be deferential to the piano bass and comes into its own very soon after the opening section. Beethoven threw out the minuet from the beginning, replacing it with a Scherzo. Even this is cast in a new form. It opens with the two strings playing a duo alone. The Trio is played completely in pianissimo, another innovation. In the Finale the piano opens with a fine swinging theme, and is then joined by the other two instruments.
The piano trio was given its usually accepted form by Haydn. He rescued it from the various “trio sonatas” with cello obligato which preceded it. Innovation and increasing complexity characterize his vast output. Beethoven took it to the next level. Even the fact that he chose to use four movements rather than merely three is important. He had a lot to say. One sees the onset of symphonic power even in this early work.
Haydn himself was a bit disturbed by the boldness of the first three trios. Like Mozart, he was very well attuned to the taste of the public and knew just how far he could go. While he admired this rugged new style he was concerned it might not go over very well in Vienna’s conservative salons. He need not have worried. Beethoven succeeded.
Piano Trio in C major (1926) Gaspar Cassadó 1897 - 1966
Gaspar Cassadó was one of the last exponents of a great tradition, the soloist cum composer. Liszt was its personification. Rachmaninoff did it perforce out of necessity and Fritz Kreisler enjoyed using his compositional skills to hoodwink and mystify his audiences. Severe and puritanical critics consider what Kreisler did to be forgery. Other more tolerant people were amused at his effrontery. Cassadó had some of Kreisler’s sense of mischief.
Whenever his name comes up one always thinks of his arrangement of the Frescobaldi Toccata but it turns out that one is wrong. Frescobaldi had nothing to do with it. Cassadó transcribed numerous major works for cello but the “Frescobaldi” was pure invention on his part. In the first half of the twentieth century when his career was at its peak it was possible to get away with minor peccadillos of this sort. Authenticity was not yet the rule.
In 1978 the musicologist Walter Schenkman did a careful analysis of the piece’s style and he realized that much of the Cassado “transcription” was anachronistic. If anything it sounded more like Handel.
Tragically Cassadó’s glowing reputation wavered and sank as a result of his actions during the Second World War. It is a sad dark story, putting even some of Pablo Casals’ behavior into an uncertain light. Cassadó lived in Italy during the war and Casals led the charge of collaboration. There is little evidence that he did anything reprehensible but the accusation was enough. Impresarios ceased to book him and he languished for years. At worst he was guilty of political naiveté, continuing to do business as usual while Casals took the high moral ground and refused to play in any Axis country. Eventually Yehudi Menuhin, who had remained friends with both men, effected a reconciliation.
Cassadó was born into a musical family in Barcelona. His father recognized the immense talent of two of his children and in 1907, moved the family to Paris. The city of Barcelona supported their education with scholarships. Casals was too busy giving concerts to take many pupils but when he heard the 10 year old Cassadó play he agreed to teach him. Wilhemina Suggia was one of the two other lucky pupils. Gaspar’s brother Agustin Cassadó studied the violin with Jacques Thibaud.
The young Gaspar was devoted to his teacher, looking upon him with awe and affection. They stayed close until the rift caused by politics many years later became insurmountable. Cassado later wrote about his studies with Casals, emphasizing how he learned to make each performance fresh by burrowing deeply into the music itself every time he played it.
While the family was still in Paris the father formed a trio with his two sons, giving many concerts. The onset of World War I forced them to return to Barcelona. Agustin died of influenza soon afterwards and Gaspar branched out alone as a soloist. At first he was renowned only in Spain but soon developed an international reputation. He began to compose, but told people it was only a hobby. This modest front barely covered his true feelings. During his heyday he always played at least one of his own pieces at his recitals.
It is not surprising he wanted to compose. His father set him an example by writing him a cello concerto for his first important orchestral concert in Spain. As part of his training in Paris Cassadó studied composition with Maurice Ravel and Manuel de Falla.
Cassadó preferred to live in Florence but in the summer of 1926 he spent some time in Berlin. There he was introduced to Albert Einstein, an enthusiastic if somewhat limited amateur violinist and Robert Mendelssohn’s wife, the gifted pianist Giulletta Gordigiani. (Robert Mendelssohn was a descendant of Felix Mendelssohn.)
The trio is said to have been written for the three of them to play. Both his masters’ influence shows up in the trio. The work had its first public performance in 1929, in Paris.
“ The first movement is in sonata-allegro form, and features three different principal tempi. Cassadó uses the differences in tempo to underline changes in mood and character in the music. The strict framework of the form does not prevent Cassadó from introducing elements of Spanish folk music from time to time. The movement’s grand scale and big gestures often make the listener think of Brahms.”
“ The Spanish elements which were largely in the background in the first movement move front and center in the second. All the melodic material sounds like folk music, and the middle section of the movement features cadenza-like passages where the violin and then the cello seem to be improvising in the manner of a flamenco singer.’
“The final movement begins with a slow, passionate introduction, where the violin and cello play in octaves, once again evoking flamenco music. The fast, virtuosic movement which follows combines playful folk-like melodies with whole-tone scales, and races to a dramatic, exciting finish.” (© Nathaniel Chaitkin, 2002)
Piano Trio in B major opus 8 Johannes Brahms 1833 - 1897
Brahms wrote five trios altogether, three for the standard combination of piano, violin and cello, the others with a French horn and or clarinet replacing one of the instruments. The piano trio opus 8 came very early when he was only about 20 years old, soon after he met the Schumanns. Schumann’s extravagant praise left him vulnerable to malicious reviews and Vienna’s critics were out there with their long knives, waiting for fresh meat.
Take for example Adolf Schubring. Schubring had a very prominent voice in musical affairs at the time. He was not too unreasonable. If he thought something was well done he was happy to say so but if it were not his remarks were biting. In 1862, he devoted several papers to Brahms’ music in Schumanniana: Johannes Brahms.
“No more than in the (C major piano) sonata is Brahms able to give the first movement of his first trio any unified shape. The same factors contribute to the failure: the padded counterpoint and the overloaded polyphony – and then chiefly from the error that he draws from the main theme contrasting ideas that repel each other.” Ouch! He went on to say that the second group had a “crabbed, grating” quality. Schubring did warm up a bit to other parts of the piece but to a sensitive man like Brahms this must have been torture.
Many years later, in 1889, Brahms revised the trio and it is the revised edition which is usually played nowadays. There is little in common between the two versions beyond the first 60 bars.
In an interval of almost 40 years Brahms broadened and deepened intellectually as well as a musician. When very young he had to earn money to help support the family and he could not continue his education. He was always a little sensitive about this. To overcome this shortcoming Brahms read very widely and was interested in science and 19th century progress.
His father had taught him the violin at first because they could not afford a piano. First hand knowledge of the range and sonorities of the violin in relation to those of the piano guided Brahms when he came to write chamber music.
Brahms’ talent was so manifestly above that of the musicians around him that the fierce battles between the Romantics (clustered about Liszt) and the classicists who claimed him as one of their own left him unmoved. He never spoke unkindly about Wagner or Liszt and deeply admired their work.
The trio is in four movements, with the Scherzo coming before the Adagio, not a completely radical departure but still a trifle unconventional. The key is more unusual. It is hard to play in a key with 5 sharps. The first theme in the tonic key is broadly lyrical and is fully developed. In the Scherzo, one hears echoes of Beethoven’s crispness and bright movement. The Trio is very melodic and has considerable tremolo.
In the slow movement a chorale-like figure is treated antiphonally. The Finale is in B minor, rather remote from the opening key but still very convincing. It has two principal themes. The first is tightly controlled and very rhythmic. The second is more flowing, and as Cohn puts it, “more outpoured, long sailing and full winded”.
