Beethoven: Trio No. 6 for Piano, Violin, and Cello, in B-flat, Op. 97, Archduke
Ames Town & Gown performers: David Finckel (cello), Wu Han (piano), and Phillip Setzer (violin)
Ames City Auditorium, October 25, 2015
Notes by Karl E. Gwiasda
Written in March 1811 but probably revised in 1814, the Archduke Trio is one of the last pieces that Beethoven composed before he entered into a protracted period during which he produced very little new music. He eventually emerged from that fallow stretch with an astonishing burst of creativity that yielded the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the final five of his string quartets. For a while, though, the Viennese public widely assumed him to have become written out, a victim both of his deafness and his declining health.
The trio received its first public performance at a concert held in Vienna on April 11, 1814, to benefit a military charity. Beethoven took the piano part while his frequent collaborators, violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh and cellist Joseph Linke, completed the ensemble. Beethoven’s participation proved distressing to those who witnessed it. After attending a rehearsal of the trio, Louis [Ludwig] Spohr lamented that
There was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist which had formerly been so greatly admired. In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys till the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of tones were omitted, so that the music was unintelligible unless one could look into the pianoforte part. I was deeply saddened at so hard a fate. If it is a great misfortune for anyone to be deaf, how shall a musician endure it without giving way to despair? Beethoven’s essential melancholy was no longer a riddle to me (cited in A. W. Thayer, The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven [1921], II, 269).
Matters may not have much improved at the concert itself. After attending the event, Ignaz Moscheles (one of the outstanding pianists of his time) recorded in his diary that the music of Beethoven’s trio proved “full of originality,” but added that “his playing, aside from its intellectual element, satisfied me less, being wanting in clarity and precision” (cited in Thayer, II, 270). Beethoven again played the trio at a second concert a few weeks later but thereafter withdrew from public performance.
The trio acquires its nickname from Beethoven’s dedication of the work to Archduke Rudolph of Austria, one of the composer’s staunchest and most generous patrons. A brother of Emperor Franz, Rudolph was a highly accomplished pianist and occasional composer. Beethoven honored him with more dedications than he did anyone else, 14 in all. Among them are the Emperor Concerto, the Hammerklavier Sonata, and the Missa Solemnis, this last work being intended for Rudolph’s installation both as a cardinal and as Archbishop of Olmütz (Moravia) but completed too late for the ceremonies.
Although Spohr remarked on Beethoven’s “essential melancholy,” the Archduke Trio is not at all of somber or gloomy character. It has come to be regarded as one of the supreme achievements of chamber music in general and of the piano trio repertory in particular.
Cast in four movements, the Archduke Trio is symphonic in scale as well as in form. Its opening movement—Allegro moderato (“Moderately fast”)—begins with the piano’s statement of a genial theme that is thereafter taken up by the strings and then elaborated. After a grand passage formed from ascending notes, the piano introduces a second subject that starts as a succession of separated notes and finishes in a melodic line sung by the cello. This thematic material then undergoes a rich development that eventually enters into an arrestingly delightful section that has the strings playing the first theme pizzicato (plucked strings) while the piano supplies playful trills. For the movement’s closing, the three themes are presented once again before the music comes to a joyous end.
As he was later to do in his Hammerklavier Sonata and Ninth Symphony, Beethoven deviates from usual practice by placing his Scherzo in second rather than third position. It follows an ABABA pattern, the A section being based on a jocund, highly rhythmic figure stated by the cello at the onset. The B section (or “trio”) begins somewhat mysteriously before arriving at a theme bearing the semblance of a grand waltz. After appearing to be entering into yet another repetition of the trio section, the movement concludes in an abbreviated reminder of its opening music.
Next comes one of Beethoven’s finest slow movements, marked Andante cantabile, ma però con moto (“Moderately paced and songlike, but nonetheless forward-moving”). It is cast in the theme-and-variations form much favored by the composer. Frequently described as a hymn or as hymnlike, the basic theme is immediately introduced by the piano, then restated by the strings. In the first variation, the strings play the theme while the piano provides accompanying triplets. For the more animated second variation, the strings break the theme into short notes. Piano triplets reappear in the third variation, which turns increasingly fervent. The tempo slows for the tenderly ardent fourth variation. The last variation turns reflective, attaining a state of complete serenity before closing in a tentative chord that leads directly into the final movement.
The merriness of the concluding Presto movement comes as a surprising contrast to what has passed before. The piano signals the shift in mood with a peremptory statement of the jaunty theme whose repeated reiteration identifies the movement as a rondo (so-named because its theme keeps coming round again). Throughout the movement, the piano most often assumes the leading role in the jovial proceedings. The tempo quickens for the trio’s affable and sparkling conclusion.