KLR TRIO February 22, 2013 MOZART

Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K.502 Allegro Larghetto Allegretto

ANDRÉ PREVIN

Piano Trio (2012) Tempo I Slowly Fast INTERMISSION

TCHAIKOVSKY

Piano Trio in A Minor, Opus 50 Pezzo élégiaco Tema con variazioni Variazione finale e coda: Allegro risoluto e con fuoco

Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K.502 WOLFGANT AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna The year 1786 marked the high point of Mozart’s efforts to establish himself in Vienna. From March of that year came two of his greatest piano concertos–No. 23 in A Major, K.488 and No. 24 in C Minor, K.491–and he then quickly completed The Marriage of Figaro, first produced in Vienna on May 1, 1786. He next turned to chamber music, creating a steady flow of works through the summer and fall. He brought this creative rush to a close with the Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K.502 on November 18, followed by the Piano Concerto in C, K.503 on December 4 and the Symphony No. 38 in D, K.504 two days later. The symphony would earn the nickname “Prague” when Mozart took it with him to that city in January 1787 for the first production of Figaro there. The triumph of the opera in Prague brought Mozart one of his final moments of unalloyed success–the record of the final five years of his life was one of decreasing popularity in Vienna and increasing poverty, domestic pain (the death of his father and several of his children), and his own illness. But the fall of 1786 found Mozart at the height of his powers, and during this period he was experimenting with his use of thematic material. Some scholars believe Mozart made the themes of the Piano Concerto in C deliberately bland, with the aim of emphasizing their contrapuntal development, and in the first movement of the “Prague” Symphony Mozart derives much of his material from only one theme. The first movement of the Piano Trio in B-flat Major shows a similar kind of thematic experimentation. The piano plays the opening theme immediately, but then–at the point where he should introduce a second theme–Mozart instead uses a variant of the opening idea. The beginning of the development brings a new theme in the violin, but the piano’s amiable opening melody dominates the movement. The other thing that dominates the movement is the sound of violin and piano, for the cello is relegated to a largely supporting role here. Solo piano opens the Larghetto, laying out the gentle theme that will serve as the basis of the entire movement; this simple melody grows more ornate with each repetition. Once again, solo piano introduces the main idea of the concluding Allegretto. At last the cello is given a part

with a higher profile as this movement races to its high-spirited close, much of the energy coming from the flying triplets of its final pages. Trio No. 2 for Piano, Violin, and Cello (2012) ANDRÉ PREVIN Born April 6, 1929, Berlin A note from violinist Joseph Kalichstein: Andre Previn's second Piano Trio is the quintessential Previn: witty, warm, combining his rich backgrounds - and expertise - in different worlds and languages that Music inhabits. It is in three short movements: the first, juxtaposing the songful with the ominously brooding, Broadway and Shostakovich; the second a heartfelt and touching aria (melody is NOT dead!), ending in an eerie frozen moment, only to give way to the third, a light-hearted chuckle of a scherzo, with quicksilver changes in meter and character: a real punch line. I recall, during rehearsals before the first performance in NYC in May 2012, Andre, with a twinkle in his eye, proudly commenting: "you can never pinpoint the meter to this movement, can you?" We are certainly proud to be part of this wonderful work's birth and continuing happy life!

Piano Trio in A Minor, Opus 50 PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg Nikolai Rubinstein, brother of the pianist Anton Rubinstein, had hired Tchaikovsky to teach composition at the Moscow Conservatory and later encouraged him as a composer, conducting and championing his music. When Nikolai died on March 23, 1881, at the age of 46, Tchaikovsky resolved to write a work in his memory, but it was difficult for him to choose the form for such a piece. Nikolai had been a pianist, but a piano concerto did not seem a proper memorial piece. Tchaikovsky disliked the combination of piano and strings in chamber music but eventually overcame this aversion to write the Trio in A Minor as the memorial to Rubinstein; it was the only time Tchaikovsky used a piano in his chamber music. He began

work on the trio in December 1881 while living in Rome and completed the score on February 9, 1882. The manuscript is inscribed: “In memory of a Great Artist.” A particular memory came back to Tchaikovsky as he worked on this music: in 1873, after the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s The Snow Maiden (which had been conducted by Rubinstein), faculty members from the Moscow Conservatory had gone on a picnic in the sunny, blossom-covered countryside. Here they were surrounded by curious peasants, and the gregarious Rubinstein quickly made friends and had the peasants singing and dancing. As he set to work on the trio, Tchaikovsky remembered how much Rubinstein had liked one of these songs. The trio as completed has a very unusual form: it is in two massive movements that last a total of almost 50 minutes. The first movement in particular has proven baffling to critics, who have been unable to decide whether it is in sonata or rondo form. It is built on two sharply contrasted themes: the cello’s somber opening melody–which Tchaikovsky marks molto espressivo–and a vigorous falling theme for solo piano, marked Allegro giusto. Tchaikovsky alternates these themes through this dramatic movement, which closes with a quiet restatement of the cello’s opening theme, now played in octaves by the piano. The second movement is a huge set of variations. The theme of these variations is the peasant melody Rubinstein had liked so much on the picnic in 1873, and Tchaikovsky puts this simple tune through eleven quite different variations. Particularly striking are the fifth, in which the piano’s high notes seem to echo the sound of sleigh bells; the sixth, a waltz introduced by the cello; the eighth, a powerful fugue; and the tenth, a mazurka introduced by the piano. So individual and dramatic are these variations that several critics instantly assumed that each must depict an incident from Rubinstein's life and set about guessing what each variation was “about.” Tchaikovsky was dumbfounded when this was reported to him. To a friend he wrote: “How amusing! To compose music without the slightest desire to represent something and suddenly to discover that it represents this or that, it is what Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme must have felt when he learnt that he had been speaking in prose all his life.” The trio concludes with a final variation so huge that many have considered it a separate movement. It comes to a somber end: Tchaikovsky marks the final page Lugubre (“lugubrious”), and over a funeral march in the piano come fragments of the cello’s theme from the very beginning of the first movement, now marked piangendo: “weeping.” This theme

gradually dissolves, and the piano marches into silence. Program notes by Eric Bromberger