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Apart from the Divertimento in B flat K254, composed whilst Mozart was still living
in Salzburg, the five numbered Piano Trios were all composed during a fertile period
between 8 July 1786 and 27 October 1788.
This period also saw the composition of such large-scale works as the opera Don
Giovanni and the last three Piano Concertos and Symphonies.
If the larger scale works were intended to be money makers, Mozart by no means
allowed the more intimate works to be of inferior quality; many of the songs, concert
arias and chamber works provide their performers with testing material. All six Piano
Trios were published during the lifetime of the composer and sold relatively well.
The first of the Piano Trios on this disc, Number Four in E major K 542,
is dated 22 June 1788 and was composed seventeen months after the previous Trio (K
502). It maintains the exceptionally high standards of K 502, and to a lesser extent
the Trio in G major K 496. Mozart's music is often said to anticipate the works of
Schubert and rarely is that more appropriate than in this Trio. The prevailing
sentiment is of radiant happiness but that radiance is often displaced by a
melancholic streak achieved by means of rapid modulations to remote keys, a
technique much favoured by Schubert. This sense of indecision runs through both
first and second movements, whilst the finale seeks to drive out the melancholy by
means of rapid passages for the violin. In the earlier Trios Mozart does not often
allow the violin and cello to shine but here all three players operate on a more or less
equal footing.
The following Trio K 548 begins with an arresting opening triadic passage in which
all three instruments enter in unison, a style far removed from the more romantic
writing used in more recent works (and especially in the E major Trio). In the slow
movement (Andante cantabile) Mozart returns to the disarmingly simple and
romantic style. All three instruments are given complicated passage work in
abundance in the busy Rondo Finale before Mozart returns to the starker manner of
his opening with a unison chord of C major.
The final Piano Trio in G major K 564 is dated 27 October 1788.
The theory was first advanced by Mozart's early biographer Otto Jahn that this work
was initially conceived as a piano sonata and that Mozart altered the piece in some
haste upon receipt of a commission for a Trio.
Since Mozart was becoming increasingly in debt and had borrowed during the
summer large sums from Puchberg, every commission had to be taken seriously.
Although the piano sonata theory is no longer current thinking, it can be seen that
the autograph score is in two different hands with the string parts alone written
down by Mozart and an unknown scribe responsible for the copying of the piano
part. Elsewhere there is a fragment of the piano part written down by Mozart.
Perhaps the work was composed in haste for there is little individual interest for the
violin and cello and less interplay between the three players than heretofore. Since
Mozart had spent the summer works composing the last three great symphonies, the
large scale Divertimento for String Trio as well as the other two Piano Trios included
on this disc it might be imagined that he was suffering from exhaustion! If the work
appears somewhat perfunctory it is by no means lacking in skill, for nobody could
write such apparently childlike music as well as Mozart. Much of the work is
undeniably beautiful with the theme and variations movement (Andante) being most
charming, the theme being played in turn by each soloist. As usual Mozart winds up
the work with a merry Rondo Finale.
Alone among the Piano Trios this last work in the genre was not published in Vienna but
in London by Mozart's friend Stephen Storace (whose wife Nancy was the first Susanna
in Le nozze di Figaro). Included in this volume was a collection of harpsichord works
and the first English edition of Mozart's Piano Quartet in E flat K493.
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