Monday, September 23, 2019

Two Decades of Early Piano Trios from SFEMS

Late yesterday afternoon at the Church of the Advent of Christ the King, the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) began its 43rd season with a recital by the Costanoan Trio. The members of this group are Cynthia Black on violin, Frédéric Rosselet on cello, and Derek Tam on fortepiano; and they presented a program entitled The Harmonious Four. That title referred to the four composers on the program, whose music accounted for the last two decades of the eighteenth century.

The earlier decade flanked either side of the intermission. The first half of the program concluded with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 542 in E major, composed in 1788, and the intermission was followed by Muzio Clementi’s D major trio, the second in his Opus 22 collection of three trios, published in 1789. The program began with Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken XV/20 in B-flat major, composed in 1794 during his second trip to London, and concluded with the second (in G major) of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 1 trios, composed in 1795.

While that “harmonious” adjective can easily be applied to all of the music that was performed, the composers were another matter. While Clementi was favorably impressed with Mozart’s work as both a composer and a pianist, Mozart was more dismissive and probably saw Clementi as a rival. That opinion may have had something to do the with musical contest between the two of them, which was arranged by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and took place on December 24, 1781.

Carl Traugott Riedel’s portrait of Beethoven, which may reflect how he looked during his early years in Vienna (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

On the other hand, Beethoven’s relationship with Haydn was that of student to teacher. As most of us know, that relationship did not go particularly well; and Beethoven sought out other teachers after Haydn left for that second trip to England. Nevertheless, Haydn’s sprit never left Beethoven; and the latter’s three Opus 2 piano sonatas are dedicated to Haydn.

Musically, the entire program provided a diverse account of how the trio sonata of the seventeenth century transformed into the keyboard trio of the eighteenth. The key factor was that the supporting role of the keyboard as a continuo instrument in the seventeenth century transformed into a primary one with the emergence of the keyboard trio. In this perspective it is worth noting how the Costanoan players were seated. Rosselet sat on the left, basically beside Tam at the keyboard; and the two of them faced Black, seated in front of the body of Tam’s fortepiano. That coupling of keyboard and cello recalls the past history of those instruments as continuo players.

By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the keyboard had come into its own; and Tam was responsible for much of the major activity in all four of the trios. He brought a refreshing panache to all four of the trios, perhaps even adding an improvisatory turn or two to some of his solo passages. From a chronological perspective, it was also informative to observe how the cello advanced from merely doubling the left hand of the keyboard to developing its own contributing voice. One could appreciate how the final selection on the program, the Beethoven trio, marked a culmination of that progressing path. In many respects Black’s violin work provided the primary bridge between the centuries, always serving as an instrument with a solo voice that, over the course of the decades, developed a new talent for “playing well with others.”

The result was a program that was as informative about the advances of music history was it was engaging through its period-sensitive performances. “Costanoan,” by the way, comes from the Spanish word for the “new coast” their explorers had found where the Pacific Ocean met the North American continent. That geographical feature can be taken as a metaphor for the “new coast” of what Charles Rosen came to call “the classical style.”

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