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Publication Date

4-3-2006

Year of Release

2006

Note(s)

The Fontana Trio

Elizabeth Reed Smith, violin

Şölen Dikener, cello

Leslie Petteys, fortepiano and piano

Dr. Petteys plays a fortepiano built by Philip Belt in 2005.

Program Notes

Early piano trios, fashionable in the eighteenth century among amateur Viennese musicians, were basically accompanied keyboard sonatas, with the violin and cello merely reinforcing the melody and bass line, respectively, of the keyboard part. Mozart wrote a set of six such sonatas as a child, and Haydn composed numerous works of this type. Mozart wrote a trio in 1776 that gave the violin, but not the cello, greater independence. His two trios· of 1786 brought to the piano trio form a new maturity and relative equality of the three instruments, and were probably composed for professional performers.

The Trio in B ♭, K. 502, was completed on November 18th, 1786, three days after the death of Mozart's third child, and six months after the premiere of his opera The Marriage of Figaro. It embodies the same complexities of ensemble writing and melodic depth as Figaro, especially in the lyrical slow movement. Author Homer Ulrich states that it "contains everything that Mozart had achieved up to this point." The musicologist Alfred Einstein wrote about the B ♭ Trio "In every measure one finds the freshness, the nobility of invention, and the inspired mastery that synthesize the contrasted elements of brilliance and intimacy, contrapuntal craftsmanship and galanterie, into a higher unit."

Smetana wrote that he composed his Trio in G minor "In memory of my first child, Bedriska, whose unusual talent for music carried us away: however she was soon torn away from us at her untimely death at the age of 4½." The precocious child, Smetana's favorite daughter, died from scarlet fever on September 6th 1855. The handwritten score of the Piano Trio bears the date 22 November 1855 which means Smetana composed this work in the two and a half months immediately following her death. Written in the depths of despair the Trio represents a turning point in Smetana's compositional style and he created a work considered to be his first mature artistic achievement. Unaccompanied violin opens the first movement with a theme reminiscent of the baroque chromatic symbol for grief. The second movement contains references to the first movement and the movement's main theme, a scherzo-like-polka, is interrupted by two trios in major keys called alternatives. The third movement, a rondo, opens with the first 87 measures borrowed from Smetana's own Piano Sonata written in 1846. The Piano Trio was first performed in Prague in December 1855 and was later published in Germany in 1880.

Note

Jomie Forum

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts | Music | Music Performance

Marshall University Music Department Presents The Fontana Trio, Elizabeth Reed Smith, violin, Solen Dikener, cello, Leslie Petteys, fortepiano and piano

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