String Trio in B flat major D.471 (1816)

Allegro

One of Schubert’s many unfinished works, the String Trio in B flat is also on of his many miracles, even if a very minor one. If the composer had abandoned it because he found the string trio an intractably awkward medium or because he thought it too derivative - too reliant on, say, Mozart’s Divertimento in E flat, which would have been the obvious model - it could be dismissed as a teenage aberration. But the music itself discloses no reason why he should have thought in such terms: on the contrary. Schubert’s scoring is not only highly accomplished but also serenely spontaneous, as though he had had not the least problem with it. And, while there is a Mozart influence here, it is stylistic rather than textural and does not seem to derive from the Divertimento in E flat. Whereas Mozart makes a special effort in the string-trio circumstances, securing a brilliantly detailed open texture, Schubert prefers more modest figuration and a more intimate sound. The relationship between violin and cello, discreetly mediated by the viola, is particularly close and is most touchingly sensitive where the harmonies turn to the minor in the development section.

Why Schubert abandoned such a promising work we do not know. He clearly intended to go on, since he made a good start to a slow movement - which he was to draw on for a couple of ideas for the late Piano Trios in B flat and E flat - and if he had persevered it would probably have turned out to be a more convincing example of its kind than the String Trio in B flat he did complete the following year.