Piano Trio in E major K.542 (1788)

James MacMillan (b1959)

Fourteen Little Pictures (1997)

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Piano Trio in F minor, Op.65

Allegro ma non troppo

Allegretto grazioso

Poco adagio

Finale: allegro con brio

When Mozart liberated the cello from its conventional function of doubling the bass line of the piano he created the modern piano trio. It is true that even in K.542, the third of the five mature piano trios, democracy is far from complete. The piano is still the undisputed star of the ensemble and the violin is much the more prominent in the two supporting roles. In comparison, however, with the subservience imposed on it in Haydn’s piano trios well into the 1790s, the cello is positively emancipated here. Although it enjoys less than its fair share of melodic interest in the first movement, it initiates a spectacular modulation just after the introduction of the second subject and it makes a similarly dramatic intervention in the recapitulation. It is rewarded for its discretion in the slow movement with its own part in an animated three-way argument in the closing Allegro and a briefly brilliant partnership with the violin towards the end.

James MacMillan, the leading Scottish composer of his generation, is probably best known for his 1990 BBC Proms commission The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and his percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel, which has had more than 300 performances since it was first heard in 1992. His chamber music, though obviously less aggressive in sound, is characteristic in its rhythmic interest, emotional power and spiritual meditation.

“Although Fourteen Little Pictures is a set of 14 separate miniatures,” he writes, “they are stitched together and interwoven to form a single through-composed work, lasting about twenty minutes. The 14 short movements were conceived as individual and complete entities but a number of common threads were extended between them to establish references, resonances and recapitulations. This was to allow a sense of scale and unity to be projected onto a larger canvas. The music covers a wide range of moods ranging from from the violent and eruptive to the childlike and desolate.”

The Piano Trio No.3 in F minor occupies much the same position in Dvorak’s chamber music as the Symphony No.7 in D minor in his orchestral music. It is the result of an effort not only to acknowledge Brahms’s achievements in the same area of the repertoire - which meant expanding the scope and adjusting the style of his own music to accommodate them - but also to equal them or perhaps even surpass them in quality. Although the death of the composer’s mother in December 1882, only a few weeks before he started work on it, must be one reason for the sustained seriousness of the Piano Trio in F minor, the example of Brahms’s chamber music, including the Piano Quintet in F minor and the recently published Piano Trio in C major, is certainly another. There is a Bohemian element in the work, however, and it is the furiant main theme of the finale that secures the happy ending.

Rupert Avis 2004

When Mozart liberated the cello from its conventional function of doubling the bass line of the piano he created the modern piano trio. It is true that even in K.542, the third of the five mature (Vienna-period) piano trios, democracy is far from complete. The piano is still the undisputed star of the ensemble - Chopin particularly enjoyed playing this work - and the violin is much the more prominent in the two supporting roles. In comparison, however, with the subservience imposed on it in Haydn’s piano trios well into the 1790s, the cello is positively emancipated here. Although it enjoys less than its fair share of melodic interest in the first movement, it makes its presence felt with a spectacular modulation just after the introduction of the second subject and it makes a similarly dramatic intervention in the recapitulation. It is rewarded for its discretion in the slow movement with its own part in an animated three-part argument in the closing Allegro and a briefly brilliant partnership with the violin towards the end.