Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Terzetto in C major for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 74
Antonín Dvořák
Born September 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, Bohemia.
Died May 1, 1904 in Prague.
Composed in 1887.
Premiered on March 30, 1887 in Prague by violinists Karel Ondrícek and Jan Buchal and violist
Jaroslav Stasny.
Duration: 18 minutes
By 1886, after his early years of disappointment, poverty, and struggle, Antonín Dvořák had
become one of the leading composers in the world. That summer, submitting to the regular
pestering of his publisher, Fritz Simrock, he completed a sequel (for piano duet) to the wildly
successful set of Slavonic Dances of 1878, and then set out on a concert tour, his fifth, of Great
Britain. Dvořák was easily the most revered musician in England since Mendelssohn, and several
important cities vied for the privilege of premiering his oratorio St. Ludmila. Leeds won the
honor, and he conducted the first performance of the work there on October 15th. He returned to
Prague three weeks later, spent an arduous two months orchestrating the new set of Slavonic
Dances, and then turned to less strenuous projects.
Living at the same address as Dvořák during the winter of 1887 was a chemistry student and
amateur violinist named Josef Kruis. Composer and chemist struck up a friendship, and in the
space of just one week (January 7-14), Dvořák composed a trio for Kruis and the young man’s
teacher, Jan Pelikán, a violinist with the Prague National Theater Orchestra, and himself as
violist. (Dvořák had played viola in the National Orchestra many years before.) This Terzetto
(Op. 74) proved too difficult for Kruis’ limited technique, however, so the following week
Dvořák wrote a simpler set of four Bagatelles for two violins and viola, which he shortly
thereafter arranged for violin and piano as the Four Romantic Pieces, Op. 75. Both works were
first played publicly in Prague on March 30th. Simrock, who constantly badgered Dvořák to
write short, easily salable works in the manner of the Slavonic Dances (from which the publisher
got very rich), quickly snapped up the Terzetto and the Romantic Pieces, and issued them later
that year.
The Terzetto opens with a lyrical movement of quiet melancholy that Dvořák labeled
“Introduction,” and which leads through a series of harmonic peregrinations directly to the
Larghetto, a warmly emotional instrumental song which becomes more rhythmically animated in
its middle regions. The Scherzo proper makes use of the vivacious Bohemian dance mannerisms
that Dvořák favored in many of the works of his maturity, while the movement’s central trio is in
the gentler style of the waltz-like Ländler. The finale is a set of variations on a harmonically
mischievous theme that courses through sections in both slow and fast tempos before ending
with a lively dash to the close.
Trio in F major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 80
Robert Schumann
Born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Germany.
Died July 29, 1856, in Endenich, near Bonn.
Composed in 1847.
Duration: 28 minutes
Given Schumann’s disposition for veering in and out of depression bordering on mental
instability for most of his adult life, it is surprising that he not only weathered the difficult events
of 1847-1849 well, but even experienced one of his most productive creative surges during that
time. The beginning of the year 1847 found Robert and Clara on tour in Bohemia and Germany,
she igniting unbridled acclaim for her sterling pianism, he serving most of the time as the
husband of the star performer. Robert received some notoriety when Clara played his Piano
Concerto at several stops with considerable success, but he completely botched a performance of
his oratorio Paradise and the Peri when he tried to conduct it in Berlin. There Clara met and
befriended Fanny Mendelssohn, the composer’s gifted sister, and seriously considered relocating
to Berlin, but Schumann was unable to arrange a situation, and the couple returned reluctantly to
their home in Dresden in March. Robert busied himself with the composition of the opera
Genoveva, but its progress was interrupted by the distressing news that Fanny had suddenly died
in Berlin on May 14th. Only a month later, the Schumanns’ sixteen-month-old son Emil expired
after a sickly infancy, but the greatest shock of the year came with the unexpected death of
Mendelssohn himself on November 4, 1847. Schumann attended the funeral in Berlin, and left a
description of his friend’s body (“the noble corpse — his forehead — his mouth — surrounded
by a smile — he resembles a glorious warrior, like a victor ...”); he talked incessantly of
Mendelssohn for months. In addition to these personal griefs, political insurrection was erupting
throughout Germany in 1848, and Dresden was one of its epicenters. Open rebellion exploded in
the streets of the city on May 3, 1849 (Richard Wagner, then conductor at the opera house, was
among the leaders, and was exiled from Germany for his part in the uprising), and Schumann
fled to the country with Clara and their children. The rebellion was soon quelled, and Schumann
returned to Dresden after having composed some small pieces celebrating the republican spirit.
Despite the turmoil and sadness of those years, Schumann enjoyed one of the most fertile
periods of his life between 1847 and 1849. “I have never been more active or happy in my art,”
he wrote. His first two piano trios were both composed in 1847 (he returned to the genre one
final time in 1851) in a burst of concentrated creative activity that recalled the astonishing
chamber-music frenzy of 1842, which yielded the three String Quartets (Op. 41), the Piano
Quintet (Op. 44), the Piano Quartet (Op. 47) and the Phantasiestücke for Piano, Violin and Cello
(Op. 88) in a few months. The Second Trio, in F major, was composed between August and
October, just before the Schumanns were stunned by the death of Felix Mendelssohn.
The opening movement of the F major Trio, a large and carefully worked-out sonata form,
begins with a powerful summoning chord and a broadly striding main theme given by the strings
in unison. The gentler second subject, in full chordal texture, is initiated by the piano. The
development section deals with the principal subject and a descending step-wise motive which
was used as the closing theme of the exposition. A complete recapitulation and a quick-tempo
coda based on the descending motive round out the first movement.
The second movement (marked “with tender expression”) is a richly textured variationsfantasy on the complementary themes introduced simultaneously at the beginning: a phrase in
the cello that ascends through an arch-shape, and a free mirror-image melody — falling, then
rising — in the violin. The third movement eschews the traditional scherzo in favor of a leisurely
intermezzo with trio, a formal device that came to be greatly favored by Brahms. The finale
grows organically and without strong formal demarcations from two elements stated at the
outset: the rising scale motive given in short notes by the cello in the third measure; and the
short-phrased theme with dotted rhythms assigned to the violin. One or the other, and often both,
of these motives is heard in almost every measure of the movement, lending it a formal unity and
developmental power.
Quintet in F minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 34
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833 in Hamburg.
Died April 3, 1897 in Vienna.
Composed 1862-64.
Premiered on March 24, 1868 in Paris.
Duration: 43 minutes
When Brahms ambled into his favorite Viennese café one evening, so the story goes, a friend
asked him how he had spent his day. “I was working on my symphony,” he said. “In the morning
I added an eighth note. In the afternoon I took it out.” The anecdote may be apocryphal, but its
intent faithfully reflects Brahms’ painstaking process of creation, which is seen nowhere better
than in his F minor Piano Quintet.
Brahms began work on the piece in early 1862 as a string quintet with two cellos, the same
scoring as Schubert’s incomparable C major Quintet, and by August, he had the first three
movements ready to send to his friend and mentor Clara Schumann and to the violinist Joseph
Joachim. They both responded enthusiastically at first (“I do not know how to start telling you
the great delight your quintet has given me,” Clara wrote), but expressed reservations about the
piece during the following months. “The details of the work show some proof of overpowering
strength,” Joachim noted, “but what is lacking, to give me pure pleasure, is, in a word, charm.”
By February 1863, the String Quintet had been recast as a Sonata for Two Pianos, which Brahms
performed with Karl Tausig at a concert in Vienna on April 17, 1864. The premiere met with
little favor. Clara continued to be delighted with the work’s musical substance, but thought that
“it cannot be called a Sonata. The first time I tried the work I had the feeling that it was an
arrangement.... Please, remodel it once more!” One final time, during the summer of 1864,
Brahms revised the score, this time as the Quintet for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, an
ensemble suggested to him by the conductor Hermann Levi. “The quintet is beautiful beyond
words,” Levi wrote. “You have turned a monotonous work for two pianos into a thing of great
beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music.”
The opening movement, tempestuous and tragic in mood, is in a tightly packed sonata form.
The dramatic main theme is stated immediately in unison by violin, cello, and piano, and then
repeated with greater force by the entire ensemble. The complementary theme, given above an
insistently repeated triplet figuration, is more subdued and lyrical in nature than the previous
melody. The closing theme achieves a brighter tonality to offer a brief respite from the
movement’s pervasive strong emotions. The development section treats the main and second
themes, and ushers in the recapitulation on a great wave of sound.
Brahms’ Schubertian strain rises closest to the surface in the tender second movement. The
outer sections of its three-part form (A–B–A) are based on a gentle, lyrical strain in sweet, closeinterval harmonies, while the movement’s central portion uses a melody incorporating an octaveleap motive.
The Scherzo is one of Brahms’ most electrifying essays. The scherzo proper contains three
motivic elements: a rising theme of vague rhythmic identity; a snapping motive in strict, dotted
rhythm; and a march-like strain in full chordal harmony. These three components are juxtaposed
throughout the movement, with the dotted-rhythm theme being given special prominence,
including a vigorous fugal working-out. The central trio grows from a theme that is a lyrical
transformation of the scherzo’s chordal march strain.
The Finale opens with a pensive slow introduction fueled by deeply felt chromatic
harmonies, exactly the sort of passage that caused Arnold Schoenberg to label Brahms a
“modernist.” The body of the movement, in fast tempo, is a hybrid of rondo and sonata forms.
Despite the buoyant, Gypsy flavor of the movement’s thematic material, the tragic tenor of this
great quintet is maintained until its closing page.
©2013 Dr. Richard E. Rodda