ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Born near Prague, 1841
Died in Prague, 1904
Piano Trio No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 90, “Dumky”
Antonín Dvořák came from a small Bohemian village, where his zither-playing father was the local butcher and innkeeper. As a young man, Dvořák’s musical career involved him in all manner of music-making in Prague: He accompanied church services from the organ, played viola in a dance band and in the local opera orchestra, taught piano lessons, and kept up his composing on the side. He might have spent the rest of his life as a cash-strapped freelance musician had it not been for the intervention of a most influential champion, Johannes Brahms. On Brahms’ recommendation, the publisher Simrock commissioned Dvořák in 1878, and the resulting Slavonic Dances catapulted the Czech composer onto the international stage.
A persistent tension in Dvořák’s career was that he lovingly embraced his Bohemian musical roots, while at the same time honing the formal skills that made him a true heir to the rigorous chamber music tradition kept alive through the middle of the century by Schumann and Brahms. Like the forces that turn coal into a diamond, the pressure of straddling musical worlds often pushed Dvořák toward his most brilliant creations, including the Piano Trio No. 4 in E Minor, completed in 1891 as he was reaching the peak of his fame. He gave the score the subtitle of “Dumky,” the plural of dumka — a Slavic term with Ukrainian origins for a type of folk music characterized by wild mood swings, ranging freely from ecstatic to maudlin. Instead of a traditional progression of four movements, the trio takes six freeform views of the dumka tradition.
The opening movement begins with the cello and piano in the grips of full-throated passion before retreating into an austere statement by the strings. These tense rumblings lead to a giddy outburst in the related major key, the first of many surprising and whimsical pivots.
The second movement again explores the rub of minor versus major, flipping dirge-like material in the minor key into a transcendent major-key theme, until another fast episode takes the music in an unexpected direction. The emotional whiplash continues in the third movement, its humble themes interrupted by another restless passage, this one swirling with dark chromatics. The fourth movement centers on a steady marching theme that detours into more volatile territory.
The fifth movement keeps up its mischievous demeanor throughout, with triplet music in the manner of a scherzo. The final dumka swirls around one last fiendish dance, its full release saved for the closing moments.
GABRIEL FAURÉ
Born in Pamiers, France, 1845
Died in Paris, 1924
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15
In France, where opera reigned supreme, chamber music went through a long period of neglect after an early high point in the dance-crazed 1700s. Seeking to re-establish a French claim on chamber music — as a counterbalance to vigorous lineage in the German-speaking world that stretched from Haydn and Beethoven to Schumann and Brahms — French composer Camille Saint-Saëns co-founded the National Society of Music in 1871. The Society became an essential proving ground for the next generation of musical leaders, including Franck, Massenet, and Fauré, who presented his very first piece of chamber music (a violin sonata) on a program in 1877. For his next attempt at chamber music, Fauré expanded to a quartet of violin, viola, cello, and piano, working on the score from 1876 to 1879. Fauré played the piano part himself for the first performance of the Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, presented on another Society program in 1880.
When Fauré composed the First Piano Quartet, he was known primarily as a composer of songs, and this quartet lives up to that reputation with an abundance of tuneful melodies, starting with the opening phrases brought forth by the strings. The angular leaps and snapping rhythms set up a contrast with the secondary theme, which counters with stepwise motion and smooth rhythms.
A Scherzo comes next to lighten the mood, with the piano chirping the bird-like theme over lopsided, three-measure phrases plucked by the strings. A middle section functions as a traditional “trio” to offset the Scherzo, using mutes on the strings to emphasize the character change.
The Adagio third movement returns to the home key of C minor for a dark opening statement, but the flowing piano accompaniment and expressive melodies lift the movement from its state of gloom. The finale picks up in the same key of C minor for a sprightly first theme that again employs the snap of dotted rhythms, creating cohesion with the opening movement. The movement uses the time-honored structure known as sonata form (most often found in first movements) to build expectation toward an arrival in C major — a sign of how well Fauré was able to adapt German tools to his French aesthetic.
© 2024 Aaron Grad