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ABOUT THE PROGRAMBENJAMIN PESETSKY
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Sonatensatz (Scherzo) for Violin and Piano in C Minor
This agitated scherzo was Brahms’s contribution to the
F A E Sonata, a piece he wrote collaboratively with Robert Schumann and the lesser-known composer Albert Dietrich. They wrote the piece as a gift for the violinist Joseph Joachim, their mutual friend, whose motto was frei aber einsam: “free but lonely.” At Schumann’s suggestion, they each hid the notes F-A-E in the music.
In October 1853, Joachim visited Düsseldorf to perform with the municipal orchestra, which Schumann conducted. The day after the concert, Joachim was given a basket of flowers with the Sonata hidden underneath. When he found the music, he was asked to read through it, and to guess who had written each movement. And so he immediately played it with Clara Schumann at the piano, and correctly identified which of his friends had written each part.
Only the month before, Joachim had introduced the 20- year-old Brahms to Robert and Clara Schumann, a landmark in their lives as well as in the history of music. Robert’s influence helped Brahms gain recognition as a young composer, and Brahms’s lifelong friendship with Clara would be of great personal importance. Brahms’s Sonatensatz—with all its interconnections—makes a fitting introduction for this concert, in which Robert and Clara, Schumann, Brahms, and Joachim are recurring characters.
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 63
Somewhere past the five-minute mark in the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, there is a
sudden shift in timbre. The violin and cello shimmer, bowing low against their bridges, while the piano plays high, like little bells. In addition to the new color, it is also a new theme, introduced at a late point in the movement when
it would be far more typical only to develop established material.
This moment is simply one of the most striking in a piece full of surprises, but the kind of surprises that are the result of an artist’s careful planning, rather than the result of spontaneous improvisation. “I used to compose almost all my shorter pieces in the heat of inspiration,” Schumann wrote
in a diary entry. “Only from the year 1845 onwards, when I started to work out everything in my head, did a completely new manner of composing begin to develop.”
The Piano Trio in D Minor, composed in 1847, reflects Schumann’s “new manner.” Between 1843 and 1844 his work had been sidelined by illness and depression, and when his health improved he began to study counterpoint and fugue alongside his wife, Clara. In 1846, Clara wrote a piano trio of her own (Op. 17 in G minor), which inspired Robert to write two trios, perhaps revealing the competitive element in the couple’s work and marriage.
Compared to his earlier work, Schumann’s “new manner” relies less on literary influences and idiosyncratic references. It’s intuitively expressive, and in some ways more tradition- ally rigorous, but continuously finds unique solutions to the old problems of classical form.
The Trio’s urgent first movement has several distinct themes, connected by liquid pianism and delineated by blocky chord- al arrivals. The second movement is built around stepped inclines, which the three fleet-footed instruments skip up together. It concludes with a false ending and a surprise coda.
The slow movement, marked “Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung” (Slowly, with tender feeling), finds the violin and cello going their separate ways, speaking in dialogue
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The Music at Tippet Rise