Piano Trio in G major K564 (1788)

Mozart’s last Piano Trio is not what you might expect of a work written in the same year as his last three symphonies and just a month after his great Divertimento in E flat K563 for string trio. In fact, in the simplicity of its construction and the relative ease of its performance, it has more in common with the Piano Sonata in C major K545 “for beginners” than with those other, more exalted products of the second half of 1788. It is not totally improbable that it was originally conceived as a companion to Piano Sonata in C and rescored as a piano trio at the request of the composer’s friend Stephen Storace, who had returned to London from Vienna in 1787. Certainly, the first edition of the Piano Trio in G major was published in “Storace’s Collection of Original Harpsichord Music” in London in 1789.

Whatever its precise origin, the Piano Trio in G cannot have failed to charm Storace’s customers through the freshness of its melodic material, and it is not likely to have overtaxed their intellect either. The first movement is a conventional, modestly developed if uncommonly lucid example of sonata form. The first subject is introduced by the piano against a gentle rustic drone on the strings and - in accordance with the reasonably fair distribution of interest that prevails throughout - responsibility for the second subject is awarded to the violin in the exposition and to the cello in the recapitulation. In the central Andante no one would have had any difficulty in following a theme-and-variations process remarkable, except where minor harmonies are applied in the penultimate fifth variation, for its adherence to the folk-like shape of the original theme. There are more variations in the closing Allegretto, although in this case they are presented in the guise of episodes in a rondo structure based on the siciliano theme introduced by the piano in the opening bars.