Programme — CSMF 97, Piano Quintet in A major, Op.114, D.667 (“Trout”), Allegro vivace …

CSMF 97

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)

Piano Quintet in A major, Op.114, D.667 (“Trout”)

Allegro vivace

Andante

Scherzo: presto

Andantino - allegretto

Finale: allegro giusto

Although the piano part is one of the principal adornments of the “Trout” Quintet, the stimulus for the work came not from a pianist but from a cellist. It was commissioned in 1819 by Sylvester Paumgartner, a leading light in the musical life of Steyr in Upper Austria where Schubert liked to spend the summer.

It was presumably to please the cellist that Schubert chose to include a double bass in the ensemble. Certainly, while giving the work its very distinctive colour, the presence of the lower instrument allows the cello to take a more active interest in the melodic material than it could if it were tied to its normal bass-line duties. The viola might have felt a little put out by the arrangement but, with the weight of the piano frequently reduced to a single line in octaves, no one instrument dominates what is essentially a convivial conversation between friends.

It was presumably also to please Paumgartner that the fourth movement is presented as a set of variations on Die Forelle (“The Trout”), which is said to have been the cellist’s favourite Schubert song. If in that case it seems strange that it is not the cello but the violin which introduces the melody, the fact is that Schubert reserves for the cello not only the inspired fifth variation but also the last echo of the song and its rippling accompaniment at the end of the movement. Or is there another, more distant echo of “The Trout” in the second subject of the otherwise march-like Finale?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

String Quartet in D major, K.499 (“Hoffmeister”)

Allegretto

Menuetto

Adagio

Allegro

The “Hoffmeister” is a fascinating anomaly among Mozart’s string quartets. It matters little to us today that when it was first published, by Franz Anton Hoffmeister in Vienna in 1786, it was issued on its own rather than in the more usual set of six - although that, clearly, is the source of its nickname. What is really extraordinary about it is that, although it was written less than two years after the last of the set of quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn and only three years before the first of those he dedicated to the King of Prussia, it has strong inclinations away from those neighbouring works towards Beethoven and even Schubert.

The anticipations of Schubert are mainly in the harmonies in the first movement, above all in the pathetic change to the minor in the second subject and in the modulations which extend the development section to positively romantic proportions. But there is something of Schubert also in the second movement, which is more a Viennese Ländler than a minuet, and in both the scoring and the adventurous harmonies of the Adagio. The future of the last movement, on the other hand, is with Beethoven, who borrowed the main theme for the finale of his Quartet in F, Op.18, No.1, and who learned much else from it besides.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Piano Quintet in G minor, Op.57

Prelude

Fugue

Scherzo

Intermezzo

Finale

Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet is so well written for piano and strings that it is difficult to believe that it was conceived in the first place as a string quartet. The original suggestion for the work came, however, from the Beethoven Quartet, who had enjoyed such a success with Shostakovich’s First String Quartet that they wanted another of the same kind. During the course of composition in the summer of 1940 the piano part was added, Shostakovich later explained, “so that I would have the chance to take part myself and travel on concert tours.”

Of course, it cannot have been as simple as that. There must have been something in the material that positively invited the participation of the piano, which in its turn required a larger structure in five rather than the usual four movements. It is possible that, as originally conceived, the work began (in the manner of Beethoven’s Op.131) with the profoundly meditative Fugue which is now the second movement. The Prelude, with its opening piano flourish and its Bach keyboard allusions, would presumably have been added later. In the Fugue itself the presence of the piano, which makes a particularly magical first entry, adds not only textural variety but a structural dimension too.

The short and vigorously playful Scherzo, the one really quick movement of the five, acts as a central pivot as the work turns back on itself. Although the Intermezzo is not quite as serious as the Fugue , it balances it in its thoughtful use of baroque conventions. Similarly although the Finale is rather more cheerful than the Prelude, and more classical than baroque in form, it finds enough in common with the first movement to seal the long-term unity of the construction.

Gerald Larner©

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)

Piano Trio in B flat major, Op.99. D.898

Allegro moderato

Andante un poco mosso

Scherzo: allegro

Rondo: allegro vivace

Schubert’s first piece for violin, cello and piano was a sonata movement written when he was no more than fifteen. He didn’t return to the piano trio for a long time but when he did, towards the end of 1827, he approached the medium with such confidence and such accomplishment as to produce two of the greatest works of their kind. Perhaps the inspiration was Beethoven’s masterful “Archduke” Trio in B flat, which had been performed in public in Vienna in 1825 by the same ensemble which was to perform Schubert’s Piano Trio in the same key only two years later.

Schubert didn’t actually model his Piano Trio in B flat on Beethoven’s - the Allegro moderato with its echoes of the corresponding movement of the “Trout” Quintet is pure Schubert - but he might well have learned from it what risks he could take. The ecstatic duet for violin and cello in the slow movement, the intricately integrated textures in the Scherzo, the sudden moments of poetry eerily coloured by whispered tremolandos on piano or stings in the final Rondo: these are only a few of the most interesting of Schubert’s piano-trio scoring in a work of generally unfailing inspiration.

Gerald Larner©

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)

Violin Sonata (Duo) in A major, Op.162, D574

Allegro moderato

Scherzo: presto

Andantino

Allegro vivace

No violin sonata has a more engaging beginning than Schubert’s in A major. The easy-going left hand of the piano part and the spontaneously melodious violin line poised above it signal immediately that this is going to be a work of much charm but no great seriousness. In fact, none of Schubert’s violin sonatas is very serious. Although he had life-long ambitions for the piano sonata, he lost interest in the violin sonata at a comparatively early stage in his career: having written three short examples in 1816 (published as Sonatinas, Op.137, in 1836) and this rather longer one (published as a Duo, Op.162, in 1851), he never produced another.

It would be a mistake, on the other hand, to underestimate the imaginative quality of any of these works. The lyrical Andantino of the Sonata in A major, strategically placed between a brisk Scherzo and a similarly brisk finale, is a particularly fascinating inspiration, not least in its bold but casually accomplished modulations and its poignant attraction to minor harmonies near the end.

Gerald Larner©