Notes for: August 2, 2005
Chamber music held little appeal for Tchaikovsky, his contributions to the repertory consisting of only three string quartets, a piano trio and a string sextet with the picture-postcard title Souvenir de Florence. Although a prolific composer of songs, he thought of instrumental music mainly in orchestral terms, and he had difficulty in scaling down his ideas to fit the limited tonal resources of chamber-music groups. In fact, while this piano trio is considered the best of his chamber-music works, he wrote it against his better judgment and only out of an overriding sense of obligation to his two benefactors.
One benefactor was his patroness and “beloved friend,” Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck. The widow of a wealth railroad promoter, Madame von Meck supported the composer with a generous annual stipend for 13 years and gave him ready access to her estate. But both parties were self-conscious about the relationship, and the agreed condition was that they should never meet. As a result, they carried on a close, often intimate, friendship entirely through correspondence.
The other benefactor was the pianist-conductor Nicolai Rubinstein. The brother of composer Anton Rubinstein, Nicolai was the founder and director of the Russian Musical Society, a concert series in Moscow, and of the Moscow Conservatory. Although only five years older than Tchaikovsky, Nicolai brought the composer to Moscow, gave him his first professional job (as a harmony teacher), rented him a room in his home, introduced him to his circle of friends, and conducted the first performances of much of his music.
In 1880 Madame von Meck asked Tchaikovsky to write a piano trio for her group of house musicians, the pianist being a young itinerant Frenchman named Claude Debussy. The composer declined, arguing that the instruments of the piano trio are tonally incompatible. His contention:
“The warm, wonderfully sustained sounds of the violin and cello lose all their value in competition with the king of instruments, while the latter tries in vain to sing as only its rivals can sing. Therefore a piano trio is an artificial thing, each instrument playing not what is natural to it but what the composer has forced upon it in distributing the voices in accordance with his musical ideas.”
Late the following year, however, Tchaikovsky surprised his patroness with the news that, notwithstanding his distaste for the medium, he was working on a piano trio to please her. But he had a second motivation: Nicolai Rubinstein had died the preceding March, and Tchaikovsky felt compelled to compose a work in his memory. Further, he believed that chamber music would be most appropriate for the expression of personal loss, but he wanted to use Rubinstein’s instrument, the piano. The piano trio was the solution, and it was dedicated “to the memory of a great artist.”
But Tchaikovsky continued to have doubts about the work. On its completion, he wrote to Madame von Meck:
“I am afraid, having written all my life for orchestra, and only taken late in life to chamber music, I may have failed to adapt this instrumental combination to my musical thoughts. In short, I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio, instead of writing directly for my instruments.”
Today many musicians share the composer’s misgivings about the suitability of the trio’s substance for chamber music, and performances of the work are less frequent in the United States than they used to be. The trio does, indeed, lack the intimacy and subtlety that we associate with the best chamber works, and at times the composer drives the instruments to the breaking point in his striving for massive orchestral sonorities. For sheer heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, however, the trio has few rivals in the chamber-music repertory, and in Russia it still matches Tchaikovsky’s three great symphonies in popularity.
Although in only two movements, the trio is an unusually long work, lasting at least 45 minutes. The qualifier “at least” is used advisedly since the composer, recognizing the work’s inordinate length, authorized extensive cuts in the second movement at the performer’s discretion.
The first movement, Pezzo elegiaco or “elegiac piece,” is a sonata form of symphonic proportions. There are several themes, divided into two groups, one minor and one major. The minor group sets the elegiac tone, while the major group is more passionate and intense. The development is arduous and exhaustive.
The second movement consists of two separate sections tied together by a single theme. The first section presents the theme – a naive folk-like tune suggesting Rubinstein’s love of folk music – followed by no less than 11 variations. The first two variations reflect the theme’s simplicity, but starting with the third the variations become longer and more complex and are cast in such unexpected formats as scherzo, waltz, mazurka and fugue. According to some writers, the variations are based on episodes in Rubinstein’s life; in any event, they illustrate graphically what a resourceful composer can do with the simplest musical materials.
The second section is devoted mainly to an even less inhibited development of the folk theme. Suddenly the driving rhythm ceases, and the elegiac strain of the first movement returns, proclaimed by the strings in heavily accented octaves against dramatic piano arpeggios. After this final peak of emotion, the work fades away with a dirge-like march, which clearly anticipates the close of the Pathétique Symphony written a decade later.
Notes for: July 31, 2012
Chamber music held little appeal for Tchaikovsky, his contributions to the repertory consisting of only three string quartets, a piano trio and a string sextet with the picture-postcard title Souvenir de Florence. He thought of instrumental music mainly in orchestral terms, and he had difficulty in scaling down his ideas to fit the limited tonal resources of chamber-music groups. While this piano trio is considered the best of his chamber works, he wrote it against his better judgment and only out of an overriding sense of obligation to two benefactors.
One benefactor was his patroness and “beloved friend,” Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck. The widow of a wealthy railroad promoter, Madame von Meck supported the composer with a generous annual stipend for 13 years and gave him ready access to her estate. But both parties were self-conscious about the relationship, and the agreed condition was that they should never meet. As a result, they carried on a close, often intimate, friendship entirely through correspondence.
The other benefactor was the pianist-conductor Nicolai Rubinstein. The brother of composer Anton Rubinstein, Nicolai was the founder and director of the Russian Musical Society, a concert series in Moscow, and of the Moscow Conservatory. Although only five years older than Tchaikovsky, Nicolai brought the composer to Moscow, gave him his first professional job (as a harmony teacher), rented him a room in his home, introduced him to his circle of friends, and conducted the first performances of much of his music.
In 1880 Madame von Meck asked Tchaikovsky to write a piano trio for her house musicians, the pianist being a young itinerant Frenchman named Claude Debussy. The composer declined, arguing that the instruments of the piano trio are tonally incompatible. His contention:
“The warm, wonderfully sustained sounds of the violin and cello lose all their value in competition with the king of instruments, while the latter tries in vain to sing as only its rivals can sing. Therefore a piano trio is an artificial thing, each instrument playing not what is natural to it but what the composer has forced upon it in distributing the voices in accordance with his musical ideas.”
Late the following year, however, Tchaikovsky surprised his patroness with the news that, notwithstanding his distaste for the medium, he was working on a piano trio to please her. But he had a second motivation: Nicolai Rubinstein had died the preceding March, and Tchaikovsky felt compelled to compose a work in his memory. He believed that chamber music would be most appropriate for the expression of personal loss, but he wanted to use Rubinstein’s instrument, the piano. The piano trio was the solution, and it was dedicated “to the memory of a great artist.”
But Tchaikovsky continued to have doubts about the work. On its completion, he wrote to Madame von Meck:
“I am afraid, having written all my life for orchestra, and only taken late in life to chamber music, I may have failed to adapt this instrumental combination to my musical thoughts. In short, I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio, instead of writing directly for my instruments.”
Today many musicians share the composer’s misgivings about the suitability of the trio’s substance for chamber music. The trio does, indeed, lack the intimacy and subtlety that we associate with the best chamber works, and at times the composer drives the instruments to the breaking point in his striving for massive orchestral sonorities. For sheer heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, however, the trio has few rivals in the chamber-music repertory.
Although in only two movements, the trio is an unusually long work, lasting at least 45 minutes. The qualifier “at least” is used advisedly since the composer, recognizing the work’s inordinate length, authorized extensive cuts in the second movement at the performer’s discretion.
The first movement, pezzo elegiaco or “elegiac piece,” is a sonata form of symphonic proportions. There are several themes, divided into two groups, one minor and one major. The minor group sets the elegiac tone, while the major group is more passionate and intense. The development is arduous and exhaustive.
The second movement consists of two separate sections tied together by a single theme. The first section presents the theme – a naive folk-like tune suggesting Rubinstein’s love of folk music – followed by no less than eleven variations. The first two variations reflect the theme’s simplicity, but starting with the third the variations become longer and more complex and are cast in such unexpected formats as scherzo, waltz, mazurka and fugue. According to some writers, the variations are based on episodes in Rubinstein’s life; in any event, they illustrate graphically what a resourceful composer can do with the simplest musical materials.
The second section, allegro risoluto e con fuoco, is devoted mainly to an even less inhibited development of the folk theme. Suddenly the driving rhythm ceases, and the elegiac strain of the first movement returns, proclaimed by the strings in heavily accented octaves against dramatic piano arpeggios. After this final peak of emotion, the work fades away with a dirge-like march, which clearly anticipates the close of the Pathétique Symphony written a decade later.