Piano Trio in D major (H.XV/24)

haydn: piano trio in A major

Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

Piano Trio in D major (H.XV/7)

Andante

Andante -

Allegro assai

Countess Witzay, a cousin and neighbour of Haydn’s employer Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, must have been an exceptionally gifted musician. The Piano Trio in D major, which Haydn dedicated to her with two other works of the same kind on their publication in 1786, requires not only an accomplished keyboard technique but also an appreciation of harmonic developments with little or no precedent at the time. If he had thought it beyond her comprehension, the composer would surely not have embarrassed her with it.

It is true that the first movement, an Andante theme and variations, is not particularly adventurous. The five variations are in the same D major tonality as the theme itself and modulate always according to the same conventional pattern. The major source of interest here is not any radical transformation of the theme but the resourcefully decorative scoring for piano and violin, which pass the melodic initiative from one to the other with each variation. The unfortunate cello, as is nearly always the case in Haydn’s piano trios, has little more to do than double the piano bass line.

The second movement begins conventionally enough - in the gentle manner of a baroque siciliano with a D minor melody on the piano and a simple pizzicato accompaniment on the strings - but that is not how it goes on. Far from having one slow movement follow another, which seems an unlikely strategy anway, Haydn is actually presenting this second Andante as a prelude to the finale. Instead of completing the structure, he leads it harmonically and melodically astray until it finds that the only way out is into the opening bars of the Allegro assai. Taking the last two notes of the Andante as the first two notes of its one and only main theme, the last movement is a rondo in D major with, however, a central episode so recklessly wayward in tonality that it seems it will never find its way back to the tonic. A short piano cadenza eventually does the trick.

Of Haydn’s last fourteen piano trios, all of them written in the 1790s, twelve of them were written for women. The first two sets (of three each) are dedicated to the two Esterházy princesses and the next two sets to admirers in London. All these dedicatees were pianists, whose personalities are reflected in the parts he wrote for them - at the continuing expense, however, of the strings, which had long been confined to an accompanying role in the Haydn piano trio. As Mozart had demonstrated in four masterful examples of the modern piano trio in the late 1780s, this was no longer a necessary precaution: the three instruments in their then state of development could be trusted to play together on equal terms. The older composer’s response was to liberate the violin to some extent while at the same time keeping the cello where it had always been, subserviently doubling the bass line of the piano.

Haydn retained the piano-trio texture he was used to presumably because he was at ease with it and could express himself in it in a uniquely intimate way. There are no better examples of that than the three works published in 1795 with a dedication to Rebecca Schroeter, the “amiable widow” the composer had met in London four years earlier. The Andante first movement of the Piano Trio in G major is a highly sociable set of variations on a theme introduced by violin and piano in unison. The equality of the two instruments is sustained throughout the four variations, the third and fourth of which offer modestly decorative virtuoso opportunities to the violin and piano respectively. The Poco adagio is a very much more private affair, the piano opening the conversation with a tender statement in E major, the violin responding with a passionate reply in A major, the two of them joining in unison again on the return of the opening theme. The throbbing low Es on the cello in the last-but-one bar are all the more effective for being so unexpected.

What Mrs Schroeter made of the last movement - headed “Rondo in the Gyspsies’ stile” in the original English edition - it is difficult to imagine. For Haydn, who could have heard Hungarian gypsy bands at Esterháza and who probably had a collection of such tunes, it was familiar material. For an amateur pianist in London, even one with Haydn as a teacher, it must have seemed very strange indeed. It is still highly effective for the reckless brilliance of the main theme and the exotic quality of the two episodes in minor keys.