Piano trio op.97 (Beethoven)

The Piano Trio No. 7 in B flat major , op. 97 by Ludwig van Beethoven is a piano trio (i.e. composed for piano , violin and cello ) published in 1811. It is often referred to as the "Archduke Trio" for short because it the composer dedicated to his pupil Archduke Rudolph of Austria .

Emergence

Beethoven began work on the piano trio in the summer of 1810 and completed it in March 1811. The composition thus falls into his “middle creative period”, which extends from approximately 1803 to 1814. The piano trio was created around the time of the ruins of Athens , King Stephen and Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8 .

The first public performance took place on April 11, 1814 in the Viennese hotel “Zum Roman Kaiser”. The performers were Beethoven himself (piano), Ignaz Schuppanzigh (violin) and Joseph Linke (cello), whereby Beethoven's deafness was already noticeable. The violinist and composer Louis Spohr wrote: "In the forte, the poor dove struck so hard that the strings rattled, and in the piano he played again so gently that whole groups of tones stayed away". This was Beethoven's last public appearance as a pianist. From around 1818 he was largely deaf.

The first edition appeared in 1816, for which, as the autograph from 1815 shows, Beethoven made a few small changes, but these did not mean any substantial changes compared to the work conceived in 1811.

In 1829 the Wiener Allgemeine Musikalische Anzeiger wrote :

“Where, genius, art, nature, truth, spirit, originality, invention, execution, taste, power, fire, fantasy, loveliness, deep feeling and lively joke in sisterly harmony entwine: you have to exclaim with the poet:› Omne tulit punctum ‹(He is called master of his trade; Horace .)"

- General Musical Scoreboard : 1829

To the music

Preliminary remark: Scherzo , otherwise generally the third movement, and the following Andante , otherwise usually the second movement, are reversed in their order (cf., on the other hand, Beethoven's “Ghost Trio”, op. 70,1 ). This already characterizes this work, op. 97, as unusual .

First movement: Allegro moderato

The movement begins with a legato piano theme. With its chords , the B major of the movement is opposed to the keys of G major and E flat major instead of the dominant F major. A pianissimo is followed by the recapitulation accompanied by a few calm chromatic trills , at the end of which the tonic and the main theme are repeated. This is followed by carrying out whose Pizzicato -Passagen their precursors in Beethoven quartets op no. 7 F Major. 59.1 , and (the "Rasumowsky quartet" first) Nr. 10 It major op. 74 (the "Harp quartet") find their precursors. After the delayed dominant at the beginning of the coda , as in Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor op. 57 , the first “Appassionata”, a series of expressive cadences follow.

Second movement: Scherzo Allegro

As is typical for other works from Beethoven's middle period, the second movement is in five parts. The first theme of the trio , laid out as a B minor fugato, is contrasted with a second trio theme in the style of a Viennese waltz .

Third movement: Andante cantabile ma però con moto.Poco piu adagio.

The slow theme of the third movement, conceived in D major, is followed by four variations.

The coda of the movement comes to a standstill several times because its beginnings do not come to their musical conclusion. This gives the coda a mood of parting, so that musicologist Lothar Schmidt wrote:

“This coda anticipates a gesture that in the 19th century was fully developed in replays of great songs. [...] The inner time of the periodic construction is virtually canceled out in the expansion of the extraordinary moment, the periodically consolidated melody expands into a great, liberated song "

- Lothar Schmidt : Piano Trio in B flat major "Archduke Trio" op. 97, in: Interpretations, 1994, Volume 2, p. 97

Fourth movement: Allegro moderato - Presto

The final movement alternates several times between tonic and subdominant and thus sounds at the beginning of the first movement. After a detailed sonata rondo form, the movement ends in an A major coda, whose cadences are also reminiscent of the first movement.

Trivia

The music of the Archduke Trio was used in Elizabeth George's crime thriller Never Shall You Forget (A Traitor to Memory) (2001) and mentioned several times in Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka am Strand (2002).

literature

supporting documents

Harenberg cultural guide chamber music. Brockhaus, Mannheim, 2008, ISBN 978-3-411-07093-0 .
Ares Wolf: Chamber music for piano and string instruments .. In: Sven Hiemke (Hrsg.): Beethoven manual. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-02153-3
Lewis Lockwood : Beethoven: His Music - His Life. Metzler, 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-02231-8 . P. 241f.

Individual evidence

↑ Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) U. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , p. 933.
^ Peter Seow-Chin Ong: Source Studies for Beethoven's Piano Trio in B-flat Major Op. 97 (›Archduke‹) , Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 297–387

Web links

Piano Trio No. 7 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
Audio performance by the Claremont Trio (from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston )
Information from the archive of the Beethoven House in Bonn

[1] Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) U. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , p. 933.

[2] Peter Seow-Chin Ong: Source Studies for Beethoven's Piano Trio in B-flat Major Op. 97 (›Archduke‹) , Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 297–387