The Piano Trios

Abstract

Trios, op.l nos.l, 2 and 3 By May 1795. when he concluded a publishing contract with Artaria and Co. to have his first three piano trios printed. Beethoven had long since gained a firm footing in Vienna. Artistic aristocrats like Prince Karl Lichnowsky had become his patrons and friends; he had found success as a pianist at public concerts as well as in the salons of the nobility and bourgeoisie. But the young firebrand evidently soon also obtained a hearing as a composer. The three piano trios had been played at a soiree given by Prince Lichnowsky as far back as the end of 1793. Joseph Haydn, who was present that evening, is generally supposed to have been unstinting in his approval. Yet Beethoven still hesitated over publication. Only after he had revised several passages (for instance in the last movement of the G major Trio) did the Wiener Zeitung publish a subscription appeal. For an advance payment of 212 florins (which was probably guaranteed by Prince Lichnowskj ) the publishing house of Artaria declared its willingness to have the three works engraved "within six weeks, clear and fair, furnished also with an elegant title page". And it is notable that in a short time 244 copies had been subscribed to by 123 music lovers. The very lust work which Beethoven thought worthy of an opus number was not without success: copies printed by other publishers and the arrangements customury at the time were further unmistakable evidence of this. The Piano Trios of Op. I. dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky, are not in any event Beethoven's first contribution to this genie, which was then still of recent origin. In his early years in Bonn he had already composed a (i major trio and then one in E flat, which so "mightily stirred" the Englishman William Gardiner, who was passing through Bonn, that he seemed lo find "all other music tame and insipid". For originality of invention as well as increasingly equal treatment of the instruments, however, the Op.l Trios put the previous attempts in the shade. Now the cello also hail emancipated itself more vigorously than before from its role as continuo instrument. The third bar of the opening Allegro of the L flat major Trio, with the surprising inflection of D flat, the flattened seventh, immediately indicates how far Beethoven had moved from the sphere of purely fashionable salon music in the three piano trios. But other movements in the two earlier chamber works also break away from the conventions of the time. Thus in the E major Largo con espressione of the Second Trio Beethoven strikes a note which already points towards the magical romantic mood of Schubertian lyricism. But equally remarkable is the A flat major Adagio cantabile of the Trio in E flat which, besides an astonishing wealth of ideas, displays exquisite handling of the themes and motives. Finally, the movements placed third in both these works are already headed scherzo, although in their basic pattern they do not differ from the minuet of the third trio from this group of pieces. In the Trio No.l the whispering of the main section, which starts with a C minor unison, contrasts with a trio seel ion in A flat major which conjures up a gentle idyll over restful string harmonies. In the C minor Trio, even more than in the other two trios of Op. 1, the young Beethoven abandoned the area of salon music. Beneath the surface of the stressful main theme of the Allegro con brio, defiant revolt and hidden menace can be heard straight away. After this boldly modulating first movement, nurtured on restless energy, the Andante, with its five variations on a song-like theme, keeps to comparatively conventional paths. The third movement, a Menuetto quasi allegro, turns out to be a typical scherzo with abrupt changes of mood and a capricious C major trio section, and there follows a scurrying Prestissimo finale.