Piano Trio in G Minor, Op.15          Bedrich Smetana

Smetana, like Dvorˇák, was a Bohemian, with a capital “B,” born in the village of Litomysl, Bohemia, into the family of a prosperous brewer who was a keen amateur violinist. It was from his father that young Friedrich, as the boy was called by his German-speaking family in mainly German-speaking Bohemia, received his initial musical instruction. But young Friedrich was a natural, picking out tunes on the family spinet at the age of three and who, by the time of his first formal training at age six, was a bona fide child prodigy pianist. It is important to mention that Friedrich was fiercely loved by his parents, not only because he was a good-natured and extraordinarily talented child, but for the fact that he was alive at all at age six: his ten siblings had all died before reaching the age of two. Still, Smetana’s father Frantisˇek (Franz), while loving music, considered the profession of musician as unworthy, indeed “effeminate.”

The boy was destined for a career in business, or possibly the law, and accordingly sent to Prague at age 14 to attend that city’s Academic Gymnasium. There, predictably, he spent more time playing chamber music – even writing some for his friends – and attending concerts, than preparing for “real” life.

In 1840, Smetana heard Liszt play in Prague and this determined the 16-year-old on a career, like Liszt’s, of performer-composer. Although he eventually achieved some success as a pianist, with the encouragement of Liszt and Robert and Clara Schumann, it was as a composer, particularly as a nationalist composer, that he would gain renown and widespread influence during his lifetime and beyond. But not until he became a Czech, as differentiated from a Bohemian, composer.

That transformation took place before and during the abortive Prague Revolution of 1848, when Smetana briefly manned the barricades with his Czech brethren – according to one biography speaking barely a word of their language – against their Habsburg overlords. Smetana’s politicization did not lead to his “discovery” of Czech folk music; he knew it already. It led, rather, to his discovery of its importance as an element of an original compositional style. Smetana is best known as a musical patriot, above all for the folksy comic opera Prodaná nevista (The Bartered Bride) and the monumental orchestral tone poems of Má vlast (My Fatherland). These are the products of Smetana the public figure, the musical father of his country, now proudly assuming his Czech first name, Bedrˇich. 

The private man composed two autobiographical works, the String Quartet in E minor (“From My Life,” 1876) and the present Trio, dating from 1855. The Trio was an attempt at coming to terms with the recent death from scarlet fever of his young daughter Bedrˇiska.

Long after the Trio’s composition, Smetana wrote a letter to one of the doctors who had tried to save his failing hearing and it contained the following: “The death of my eldest daughter, an exceptionally talented child, motivated me to compose... my Trio in G minor. It was performed the same year in Prague [the composer took the piano part]... The audience was unresponsive and the critics hated it.” A year later it met with a much warmer reception, however, when it was performed, again with the composer at the piano, with Liszt in attendance, in Smetana’s Prague apartment. Liszt was profoundly moved and arranged for subsequent performances in Germany and Austria.

The G-minor Trio has never achieved the fame of the E-minor Quartet. The latter is an “easier” work, of balanced light and shade, from a man who had experienced both great joys and great sorrows. The grief-stricken composer of the Trio was only 30 years old and, as may be guessed, particularly aware of the fragility of life. To pile misery on woe, Smetana’s wife, Katerina, would give birth to another daughter shortly after Bedrˇiska's death, and that child would live for only eight months.

“Self” is perhaps the central notion of Romanticism, and it is with his grieving self that Smetana is concerned here. The somber principal subject of the opening movement is announced on the violin’s G string, unaccompanied, and the ensuing material of the movement never strays far from G minor. While both the following movements are also begun in and remain dominated by that dark tonality, there is some major-key alleviation of the sorrowing there. The second movement is a serious scherzo which, one of the composer’s early biographers suggests, is a “portrait” of the child, beginning with sadness over her loss and then, in a slow, wistfully Schumannesque alternativo(Smetana uses this expression in place of the usual “trio,” but it serves the same function, to provide contrast), then a return to the scherzo and another alternativo, dignified and lofty, perhaps a vision of the grown woman. The finale is a rondo beginning in energetic defiance, but soon subsides into a tranquil, hymn-like elegy: a benign sadness, an end to the pain.

Notes by Herbert Glass

Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op.13      Richard  Strauss

Richard Strauss was the son of Franz Strauss, one of the finest horn-players of the 19th century and for many years the first horn of the Munich opera. Strauss Sr. was very conservative musically (he hated the operas of Wagner, which he played under the composer's direction) and insisted that his son have a "classical" music education - the models held up before the boy were Mozart and Mendelssohn. But in 1883, at the age of 19, Richard left college and moved to Berlin to study music, and in the process he discovered a new model: Johannes Brahms. Brahms was at this point only 50 years old and at the height of his powers - his Third Symphony had just been premiered, and he was about to begin his Fourth (in fact, Brahms and the young Strauss would meet at the premiere of the Fourth Symphony in October 1885).

Under the new influence of Brahms, the teenaged composer began his Piano Quartet in C minor in the spring of 1884 in Berlin and completed it later that year. This music shows an unusual fusion of musical personalities - the sobriety and grandeur of Brahms are here wed to the fire and impetuous virtuosity of the young Strauss. The Piano Quartet is a big piece (35 minutes), it has a rich, dark sound, and it develops its ideas with a blazing energy.

The quiet opening of the Allegro is deceiving, for the music will quickly explode in a shower of energy, and that sharp contrast may be a key to this sonata-form movement: moments marked con espressione or tranquillo will instantly give way to superheated passages marked molto appassionato or agitato. This opening movement is the most "Brahmsian" in the Quartet, particularly for its dark sonority, its development of small thematic motifs, and its dramatic scope - the movement drives to a close that is virtually symphonic in conception and sound.

The Scherzo, marked Presto, is full of quicksilvery motion and a great deal of energy, especially in the pounding octave drops that recur throughout. A flowing trio section leads to a return of the opening material, and Strauss recalls a bit of the trio section before the movement whips to its Prestissimo close.

After two such powerful movements, the Andante brings a measure of calm. The piano's lovely opening idea gives way to the viola's lyric second subject, and Strauss extends these two themes gracefully. The concluding Vivace returns to the mood and manner of the opening movement. Its fiery beginning, full of sharp edges and syncopated rhythms, leads to the cello's calm second theme (molto con espressione, specifies Strauss), and these two ideas are developed at length - and with a great deal of virtuosity - before the music hammers its way to the conclusion on a firm C-minor chord.

The Piano Quartet in C minor was premiered in Weimar on December 8, 1885, and the following year it won first prize (among 24 entrants) in a piano quartet competition sponsored by the Tonkünstlerverein of Berlin. But this music represents a direction the young composer did not choose to follow. With his Violin Sonata of 1887, Strauss would say goodbye forever to chamber music: ahead of him lay the great tone poems, which wed a slashing orchestral virtuosity with the most vivid pictorial imagination. Chamber music (and the influence of Brahms) were no longer of interest to him, and this Piano Quartet - trailing clouds of Brahms - represents one of the last moments of Strauss' youthful apprenticeship before he discovered the path to his own musical independence.

Notes by Eric Bromberger