Viennese Metamorphosis aka. Apocalypse 1750

Program:

Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) – Trio sonata in g minor, HWV 400:
I. Largo - II.Come alla breve - V. Air. Andante allegro - VI. Bourrée

John Stanley (1712-1786) – Solo in D major, Op. 1 No. 6:
I. Largo - II. Allegro andante - III. Minuet allegro & Variation

Johann Gottlieb Janitsch – (1708-1763) Trio sonata in g minor, IJJ 32:
I. Adagio - II. Allegretto - III. Allegro assai

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) – Concerto for violin, cello, and harpsichord concertante in a minor TWV 42:a2:
I. Andante - II. Allegro - III. Largo - IV. Allegro assai

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) – Claviertrio in G major Hob. XV:41:
III. Adagio

Joseph Haydn – Claviertrio in f minor Hob. XV:f1:
I. Allegro moderato - II. Minuet & Trio - III. Finale. Allegro

Encore:

Joseph Haydn – Claviertrio in F major Hob. XV:40:
III. Finale. Allegro molto

***

The focal point of this program is reevaluating the very widespread notion that the death of Bach symbolically ended the Baroque era.

What follows chronologically, is on the one hand the activity of Bach’s sons as epigones of the unique aesthetics of the “old” music, and on the other hand the rise of Classicism, represented by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. And although such a view simplifies and generalises music history and falls prey to tokenism in approach to the most well-known composers of the time, it is not uncommon - both among amateurs, as well as professionals within the musical industry. Very often the time around the year 1750 constitutes a certain border: students and performers of early music unwillingly reach for later repertoire, while classical musicians feel equally at home playing classical repertoire alongside later literature on contemporary grand pianos, often without pondering the musical and historical context of the earliest classical compositions.

In this program we demonstrate that in fact, the process of development in culture and in music is and always has been linear, informed by events and influences from a vast variety of factors. The long tradition of “early music” did not die together with the biggest names among the Baroque composers; and classical music did not emerge as an entirely unrelated phenomenon, a coincidental figment of imagination of three geniuses living in Vienna and shaking the fundaments of the world with their innovations. Quite the contrary: the development of musical style and preferences, cultural fashion, and other socioeconomic factors, shaped the history of composition in such a way that the establishing of musical forms that later became the most characteristic of Classicism were all but inevitable.

The “Viennese” part of our program comes from the notion of "arriving" in Vienna (that is, ending with a musical form very typical of the Viennese repertoire), but showing it in broader historical context, as in ‘how did we get to Vienna/Viennese popular compositional forms’. To say it in a very informal way,

we see the program as a “prequel” or a “hero's origin story”, where the hero is the piano trio.

So our program is built in such a way as to illustrate the gradual changes of the “trio”-aspect in chamber music playing:

• from a baroque trio sonata (two high solo instruments and basso continuo, or accompaniment improvised upon a bass line)

• and a common instrumentation of the solo sonata (one high instrument, basso continuo, and a melodic bass instrument),

• through compositions such as Janitsch (trio sonata where one of the solo voices is significantly lower in range already, with a basso continuo part becoming more independent despite the presence of a viol part),

• to the trio compositions with keyboard obbligato (Georg Philipp Telemann's two cycles of pieces for keyboard obbligato with accompaniment of a violin and a cello, not unlike the Pièces en concerts by Jean-Philippe Rameau) which in their structure are very obvious and direct predecessors of…

• …the classical piano trios - one of the most important forms of the Classicism.

“Piano trio” is a somewhat problematic term in English -

- it is an established name of a musical form, regardless of what keyboard instrument plays the keyboard part. The German “Klaviertrio” seems much more universal in this context, as historically “K/Clavier” is a widespread term used in the 18th century to mean any keyboard instrument (depending on circumstances).

Now the compositions of Haydn are of particular interest, as he is the oldest of the three Viennese Classics, and his Claviertrios are divided into two separate periods: the later Klaviertrios are a popular staple literature for “modern” classical musicians, however the earlier Claviertrios are not very popular among pianists for they are not written idiomatically for the piano and do not represent Haydn's innovations within the frame of this musical form (which appear more apparently in his later compositions). The clear time division in Haydn's Claviertrio opus, alongside the annotation “Cembalo” in some manuscript sources of these earlier pieces, makes us convinced that this repertoire was not only composed according to the earlier, more conservative fashion and theory, but also that it was specifically intended for performance on the harpsichord.

This historical and musical bridge connecting the highlights of Baroque compositional thought with the earliest Classicist literature is a wonderful and fascinating process, which we  gladly present in concert.