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Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at 6:30
All-Access Chamber Music Series PRESSENDA TRIO David Taylor Violin Gary Stucka Cello Andrea Swan Piano beethoven
Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1, No. 1 Allegro Adagio cantabile Scherzo: Allegro assai Finale: Presto
intermission
brahms
Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op. 87 Allegro Andante con moto Scherzo: Presto Finale: Allegro giocoso
The All-Access Chamber Music series is generously underwritten by an anonymous donor, who attended similar concerts forty-five years ago.
comments by richard e. rodda ludwig van beethoven
Born December 16, 1770; Bonn, Germany Died March 26, 1827; Vienna, Austria
Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1, No. 1 composed 1791–93
On his way back to Vienna in 1792, Joseph Haydn visited Bonn, where he met a young pianist and composer in the employ of the electoral court: Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven, who had built a local reputation largely as a keyboard virtuoso, told Haydn—then the most famous musician in Europe—that his greatest ambition was to make his mark in the world as a composer. Haydn encouraged Beethoven to move to Vienna and promised to take him as his student if he did. With the generous help of the archduke of Austria and a German count, Beethoven left for Vienna in November and began counterpoint lessons with Haydn. Mutual dissatisfaction with the pedagogical relationship sprang up, however; Haydn was too busy and Beethoven was too bullish. Beethoven remained eager to absorb his teacher’s advice, however, so he invited Haydn to a private concert of his music late in 1793 at the Viennese palace of prince Karl Lichnowsky, who had taken on the young composer as a protégé and given him room, board, and encouragement. Beethoven chose to perform three new piano trios for the occasion. Each created a sensation with Haydn and the concert guests, and the pieces quickly became familiar throughout Vienna.
T
he First Piano Trio launches with a vigorous main theme that juxtaposes full chords for the ensemble with arpeggiated rockets
for piano. The movement quickly takes some adventurous harmonic turns, but their unexpectedness is ameliorated by their quiet, lyrical phrasing. A climax in a new key and a winding, downward gesture from the cello lead to the second theme, a smooth hymn-like construction in even note values. The music becomes more animated as it proceeds, but the exposition ends with a few sedated cadential harmonies. The development section, rather brief for a movement of this scale, incorporates fragments from most of the earlier musical material. A full recapitulation rounds out the movement. The Adagio is based on an arching piano theme presented at the movement’s beginning. Violin and cello share this lovely melody and then provide a dialogue using legato scale patterns as a contrasting episode. The piano recalls the opening melody before digressing into a passage of stronger harmonies and greater emotional depth. The scherzo begins ambiguously by hinting at the troubled key of C minor (the tonality of the Fifth Symphony, Coriolan Overture, and Pathétique Sonata) before settling into complementary E-flat major patterns. By way of contrast, the central trio is gracious and ethereal. The finale is a fully formed sonata structure that uses a sly, displaced-octave motive as its first theme and a hearty trot down the scale as its second. The movement’s boisterous humor and ingenious motivic development foreshadow many of the closing movements of Beethoven’s later masterworks.
a b o v e : Beethoven, 1801 oil portrait by Carl Traugott Riedel (1769–1832)
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COMMENTS
johannes brahms
Born May 7, 1833; Hamburg, Germany Died April 3, 1897; Vienna, Austria
Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op. 87 composed 1880–82
One of Brahms’s favorite summer haunts was the resort town of Bad Ischl in the lovely Austrian lake region east of Salzburg. In June 1880, he sent a friend the latest products of his working vacation there: the first movements of E-flat and C major piano trios. “If these movements and perhaps more were composed at Ischl, you must be in your best form,” his comrade responded. “How easily the music runs on! These two manuscripts of yours give me the sense of your untiring creative faculty better than any I have yet seen.” Despite his friend’s fine words, however, Brahms was in no hurry to complete these works. It was not until two years later, again at Ischl, that he took up the C major trio and brought it to completion in July 1882. Its E-flat companion was never finished and has completely vanished, another victim of Brahms’s systematic practice of destroying his sketches and incomplete works. As soon as the trio was done, Brahms, fond
of a sort of gruff hyperbole, shot off a letter to his publisher, Fritz Simrock: “A friend took a trio of mine to the copyist yesterday. You have not yet had such a beautiful trio from me, and very likely have not published one to equal it within the last ten years.” Brahms also sent a copy of the score to his dear and trusted friend Clara Schumann, and she wrote to him from Gastein in August, “Such a trio is a great musical treat! I wish I had had the instruments here, as I could only guess at many of the effects, especially on my poor little piano! Still it is a splendid work; there is much in it that delights me.” In August 1882, the trio was given a private reading. Brahms, who delighted in practical jokes, introduced the pianist for the evening, Ignaz Brüll, as the piece’s composer. It
from top : Johannes Brahms, ca. 1880, chalk drawing by Olga von Miller zu Aichholz (1853–1931) View of Bad Ischl and the Kaiservilla, with the Dachstein in the background, ca. 1880s. Oil on canvas, Ferdinand Lepié (1824–1883)
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COMMENTS
formally premiered in Frankfurt that December, with Brahms at the piano and violinist Hugo Heermann—who was the first to play Brahms’s Violin Concerto—and cellist Bernhard Müller. Brahms’s Piano Trio in C major shows the concentrated expression and masterful formal control that mark all of the important works of his full maturity. The opening movement is a seamless sonata structure built from the theme, which is announced immediately by the strings with a more lyrical strain presented soon after by the piano. The Andante is a set of five variations
on a melody with a strong Hungarian gypsy cast. In the somber key of C minor, the scherzo is delicate and mysterious at the same time. Though marked giocoso (playfully), the finale is largely serious and intense in expression, becoming unclouded only in its closing measures.
Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.
profiles David Taylor Violin David Taylor joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as assistant concertmaster in 1979. Born in Canton, Ohio, he first studied violin with his father at the age of four, and continued with Margaret Randall and Rafael Druian at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He later studied with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School, where he received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He became a member of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1974 as a first violinist. With the Chicago Symphony, he has made numerous solo appearances, including performances with Sir Georg Solti. He also has served as acting concertmaster of the St. Louis
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Symphony and concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Taylor served as concertmaster of the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, which disbanded in 2015. As a lover of chamber music, he often appears in recital and solo performances in the Chicagoland area, at the Ravinia Festival, and on WFMT-FM. He frequently performs with the Pressenda Trio with fellow CSO cellist Gary Stucka and pianist Andrea Swan. Taylor is also a soloist with the region’s local orchestras. He teaches privately at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. A coach of orchestral violinists, he has students in orchestras across the United States and Japan. David Taylor resides in downtown Chicago with his wife, violinist Michelle Wynton. He plays a J.B. Guadagnini violin, made in 1752. David Taylor holds the Ling Z. and Michael C. Markovitz Chair.
PHOTO BY TODD ROS EN BERG
PROFILES
Gary Stucka Cello
Andrea Swan Piano
A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1986, Gary Stucka began playing cello at the age of eight and received his first lessons at Park View School in Morton Grove, Illinois. He subsequently studied with Harry Sturm and Leonard Chausow. As a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, he received the Louis Sudler Foundation for the Musical Arts Award. Stucka continued his studies as a scholarship student of Karl Fruh at Roosevelt University’s Chicago Musical College (now the Chicago College of Performing Arts), where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He was assistant principal cello of the Grant Park Orchestra and served as principal cello of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1981. In 1981, he joined the Cleveland Orchestra, where he remained until joining the CSO. A member of the Pressenda Trio since 1989, Stucka also has performed with the Chicago Symphony String Quartet. In addition to appearing as guest soloist with numerous orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, he has served on the faculties of Northwestern University and the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
Andrea Swan is a Chicagoarea chamber musician, collaborative pianist, orchestral player, soloist, and teacher. She is principal keyboardist of the Grant Park Music Festival and plays regularly in the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra. She also accompanies instrumentalists in their final auditions for positions in the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera orchestras. Swan has served as the official accompanist for many music festivals and competitions throughout the United States, including the Stulberg International String Competition. Swan performs regularly with the Evanston Chamber Ensemble and the Pressenda Trio. She also appears annually at Northwestern University’s Winter Chamber Music Festival. Swan has premiered many new solo and chamber music compositions as pianist of the University of Chicago’s Contemporary Chamber Players and the Fulcrum Point New Music Project. She also maintains a large private teaching studio. Swan holds degrees from Oberlin College and Indiana University. Her mentors include Jack Radunsky, György Sebők, Menahem Pressler, Josef Gingold, and János Starker.
P H OTO BY TO DD RO S E NB E RG
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