Notes for: July 20, 2021
For Mozart, 1788 was a bad year financially but a good year musically. In June that year Mozart wrote to the merchant and fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg, “If you would be so kind, so friendly, as to lend me the sum of one or two thousand gulden for a period of one or two years, at suitable interest, you would be doing me a most radical service.” Mozart was feeling great financial pressure. His income had dropped, he owed money, and none of his money-raising schemes were working. He failed to attract subscribers for the publication of three String Quintets; plans for a series of summer concerts didn’t pan out; he was pawning valuables; and to support his family he was teaching, which he hated.
His troubles didn’t slow down the pace of his composing, though. Over that summer and fall Mozart wrote his last three symphonies, his last violin sonata, the piano sonata K. 545, and his last three piano trios. While the symphonies are grand works for the concert hall, the Piano Trio in G Major – the last of the three – is a warm and affable piece that you could imagine playing with friends during a convivial musical evening at home. Mozart was a brilliant pianist, so it’s not surprising that the piano sings throughout this Trio (in fact some have suggested that the work originally was meant to be a piano sonata). But in Mozart’s hands the piano trio was also becoming a more balanced conversation among all three instruments, and that evolution too is evident here.
You can hear the interplay throughout the opening Allegro, as the strings echo the opening theme introduced by the piano, and then all three instruments continue to converse back and forth. The development introduces a darker note, but for the most part the Allegro is filled with conviviality. The Andante is a lovely theme and variations, built around a gentle melody. Not until the fourth variation is the theme itself altered. With the minor-key fifth variation the mood become solemn and darker, but good cheer is restored in the rhythmic last variation. Playfulness and good-natured charm infuse the concluding Allegretto, a sunny rondo filled with dance rhythms, colorful instrumental exchanges, and a final joyful outburst. As one commentator has said admiringly of this feel-good work, “Mozart gives the impression of having put every note in precisely the right place.”