Notes for: August 11, 2009
Alone among Brahms’s works, and arguably among all the masterpieces of chamber music before Dvorák’s visit to the “New World” in the 1890s, the trio published as Opus 8 had its world premiere in the United States. The event took place on November 27, 1855, in New York, in an auditorium known as Dodsworth’s Hall, which stood on Broadway at 11th Street. The performers also had illustrious futures ahead of them – the violinist, Theodore Thomas, became conductor of the Chicago Symphony; the cellist, Carl Bergmann, became conductor of the New York Philharmonic; and the pianist, William Mason, became a prominent concert artist and teacher.
That the premiere was held in the United States – three weeks before the European premiere in Germany – seems particularly remarkable in view of the heightened expectations about Brahms then existing in European musical circles.
Two years earlier, Robert Schumann, in a widely read article, had proclaimed the young composer from Hamburg the new musical messiah, the successor to Beethoven. As a result of Schumann’s continued propagandizing, European musicians and audiences looked forward eagerly to each new Brahms composition. New York’s coup was made possible by the fact that Mason, the American pianist, had hit it off with Brahms when Mason was taking lessons from Franz Liszt in Weimar early in 1853 and Brahms had dropped in for a visit.
The trio was well received at its first German performance, but the New York press, remote from Schumann’s influence, was unmoved. Following the concert, the New York Dispatch referred to this “peculiar and outré style of music.” The New York Times pontificated: “With many good points and much sound musicianship, it possesses also the usual defects of a young writer.”
As things turned out, Brahms eventually came around to the Times‘s assessment. In 1890, 36 years after the trio’s composition, Brahms extensively revised the work for a second edition. He cut one-third off its length – it is still some 35 minutes long – and only the scherzo escaped extensive rewriting. It is the revised version, combining the exuberance of youth with the discipline of maturity, that is played today.
The most important structural feature of the trio is the characteristically Brahmsian prominence of the piano. To Brahms, the piano’s sonorities made it the chamber-music instrument par excellence. He composed nine works involving the piano with two or more other instruments, and in all of them he created two balanced musical forces. On the one hand, he placed a magnificently written piano part, with each hand a separate and distinct voice. On the other, he placed the other instruments, often functioning as an integrated unit like the string section of an orchestra.
The main theme of the trio’s first movement – intact from the original version – is one of those long sweeping Brahmsian melodies, extending for some 40 measures. The balance of the movement, in sonata form, is on an equally massive scale even after the discarding by the composer of an extended fugal episode in the original.
The second movement is the scherzo, and, except for some minor modifications in the coda, is unchanged from the original. The principal section is based on a jaunty theme, and the trio middle section is a nostalgic melody, reminiscent of a landler or Austrian country dance, which rises to a sonorous climax.
The slow movement, adagio, demonstrates Brahms’s use of dual musical forces. The principal theme has a two-phrase question-and-answer pattern, the first phrase played by the piano and the second by the violin and cello. After the pattern is repeated twice, the two musical forces merge. Following a contrasting middle section, substantially revised in the second version, the main theme returns with delicate re-scoring.
The finale is again in sonata form but in B minor instead of B major. The main theme, announced by the cello, has a sweet-sad flavor and a rather indecisive character growing out of its inability to find a tonic resting place in all its 17 measures. The second theme, marked pesante (in a heavy manner), was entirely the product of the revised version, but it effectively complements the youthful spirit of the original.