Music Chamber

Allegro

Andante con moto

Scherzando. Allegro moderato

Allegro moderato

 

Schubert lived his entire life in the shadow of Beethoven. His career was cut tragically short by illness, but in the last two years of his life, the most fertile time of his artistic career, he tackled the big instrumental forms in which Beethoven had excelled. His final masterpieces included the song cycle Winterreise, the string quintet, the octet, the last string quartets, the three magnificent last piano sonatas, the "Great" C Major Symphony, and the two piano trios. Prior to the composition of the piano trios in B-Flat Major and E- Flat Major, Schubert had written only one movement in the medium. The work we hear this evening, one of the great masterpieces of the piano trio literature, forms a bridge between the trios of Beethoven and Brahms. The Allegro is in sonata form, its exposition establishing, as Janet Bedell describes it, "a dynamic opposition between dramatic intensity and gentle lyricism." The opening theme, played by all three instruments in octaves "summons up Beethoven's spirit immediately." The second theme, "softly pattering," and "slightly conspiratorial" is introduced in the piano's upper register. A third "subdued" and "undulating" melody, introduced by the cello, becomes the principal subject of the development section.

 

Schubert based the Andante, the emotional center of the trio, on the Swedish song "Se solen sjunker," (The sun is going down). The gist of the song text is that "time is running out, hope has fled, the opportunity for love has been lost" (Hefling). The movement, a rondo (A B A' B' A"), opens with "a tragic, resolute march" with "undertones of a funeral procession" (Bedell). The cello introduces the first mournful theme, which is repeated in the piano. The first violin introduces the second theme over arpeggios in the piano. Unexpectedly, however, the "music veers into a savage climax of pain and anguish--the kind of startling outbursts we hear in several of Schubert's late masterpieces." Although the calm theme returns, Schubert "wrenches it harmonically toward an even more violent climax that disintegrates its melodic shape" (Bedell).

 

A relief after two intense movements, the Scherzo is a canon in which various tunes are stated by one instrument and echoed by another a measure later. The light and delicate main theme stands in sharp contrast to the heavy stomping dance of the trio.

 

The finale, also in sonata form, opens with a perky theme, leading into a second soft, exotic theme that, as Nathan Barber hears it, "seems to imitate a cimbalon--an ancient dulcimer of Hungarian origin." Schubert dwells on the first theme at great length in the exposition. In the development section he recalls the haunting Swedish theme from the second movement, now played by the cello over the strumming strings of the violin. As it nears the end of its nearly 45 minute duration, Op. 100 can be said to illustrate what some have called the "heavenly length" of Schubert's compositions.