Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano
Nino Rota (1911-1979)

All but devoted movie fans pay scant attention to the credits beyond the stars and director. But great film music insinuates itself into the soul even if the composer’s name doesn’t have quite the cachet of Mozart or Stravinsky. But such titles as The Godfather, Romeo and Juliet, Eight and 1/2 or La dolce vita bring to mind the melodies and lush, romantic, sometimes witty sound world of Nino Rota.

Giovanni Rota was a child prodigy who composed his first oratorio, The Childhood of John the Baptist, at 11 and at 13 a lyrical comedy, Il principe porcaro (The Swineherd Prince) based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Encouraged by Arturo Toscanini, Rota spent two years in the United States studying at the Curtis Institute but returned to Italy to complete his musical studies in Milan and with composers Ildibrando Pizzetti and Alfredo Casella. He remained in Italy teaching at the Liceo Musical of Bari in Southern Italy.

Rota was a prolific composer, churning out total of 150 film scores over the course of his life. After World War II, he became particularly close to Federico Fellini, for whom he supplied nearly all of the Italian director's film scores. But Rota also had a substantial catalogue of compositions in other genres: works for piano, chamber music, choral works, 11 operas and 5 ballets. For his symphonic output, he had a particular affinity for the concerto, with concerti for cello (3), harp, piano, trombone, bassoon and horn, plus a concerto for orchestra.

Despite great admiration and friendship for Igor Stravinsky, Rota eschewed the atonal and dissonant languages of his own century. In this regard, he most resembles fellow composer Erich Korngold, who virtually invented the musical conventions of the mid-twentieth-century Hollywood film score. Of his philosophy as a composer, Rota said: “I feel happy [when writing music]...to give everyone a moment of happiness is what is at the heart of my music.”

Rota composed the Trio in 1958 for the Klemm-Cervera-Wolfensberger Trio. In the first movement, the three instruments are in constant argument, as if trying to outshine each other. In the gentle second movement, the flute and violin converse with each other, with the piano mostly in the background. Only in the rollicking finale do all three instruments truly come together.

Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 70, No. 2
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Beethoven composed the two Piano Trios Op. 70 in 1808, one of his most productive years. He also finished the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasy and the A major Cello Sonata. The trios were probably motivated by both commercial and personal reasons. In correspondence with his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel Beethoven mentioned composing the two trios because “such trios are rather rare.” The trios were probably also inspired by his friendship with the Countess Marie von Erdödy, a gifted pianist – although partially paralyzed – in whose home he resided at the time. Both trios are dedicated to her.

Bad tempered and slovenly, Beethoven always ended up in adversarial relationships with his landlords, publishers and friends, and the Countess was no exception. According to Thayer in his Life of Beethoven, after one of his characteristic and violent quarrels with his landlady over a servant, he suggested to his publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel to change the dedication to his pupil and patron, Archduke Rudolph, but the quarrel was patched up and the original dedication remained.

The two Trios stem from a period in Beethoven’s life when his music tended to seesaw in mood between elation and despair, reflecting his realization of the inexorable progress of his deafness, but nevertheless being able to continue composing and finding fulfillment in his music. The E-flat trio is the sunnier of the two and by far the less frequently performed. It lacks the large emotional swings and intensity of its D major twin.

The first movement begins with a slow introduction – unusual in chamber music although not unheard of. But then, Beethoven incorporates the thematic material from the introduction into the following allegro and again to round out the movement at the end as part of the coda. The second movement is a theme and variations – or rather, themes and variations, since Beethoven alternately varies two separate themes, one in C major, the other in C minor. The third movement, normally a scherzo with Beethoven, is a charming waltz that maintains the same meter and architecture as the classic minuet or scherzo movement. The energetic finale, full of wit and fun, is the movement in which Beethoven employs the most creative harmonic development in this work.

From Années de pèlerinage: Première année
No. 6 Vallée d’Obermann
Arranged for Piano trio under the title Tristia by Edward Lassen
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Franz Liszt was a man of paradoxes and extremes who could only have flourished in the Romantic period. He was both superficial showman and contemplative artist, mystic and hedonist, genius and poseur, saint and sinner. He broke many a commandment and many a heart, exhibiting incredible flamboyance in his virtuoso piano performances before adoring audiences, yet longing for a life of religious asceticism. He fathered numerous illegitimate offspring but ended up taking minor orders in the Catholic Church with the right to the title Abbé Liszt. He witnessed first-hand the cultural and musical transformation of Europe but unfortunately never wrote his life’s memoirs, being “too busy living it.”

Between 1835 and 1839 Franz Liszt, together with his current inamorata Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, toured Switzerland and Italy for four years, the composer recording his musical impressions in the first two books of his Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The title derives from Goethe’s Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel), Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Such novels and poems of self-discovery were extremely popular during the Romantic period and spawned generations of literary offspring that can be found by the truckload in Amazon’s adult and young adult fiction catalog. Liszt’s “coming of age” with the married Countess produced three children, one of whom, Cosima, followed in her mother’s tracks to become the adulterous lover and later wife of Richard Wagner.

While Liszt’s first book covered Switzerland and primarily contained musical reflections on nature, the second was inspired by the Italian poetry of the quattrocento (fourteenth century), specifically Petrarch and Dante. In 1840 he added a supplement to the second book, musical impressions of Venice and Naples. Liszt seldom considered a work “finished.” A compulsive reviser, he repeatedly and extensively tinkered with and tweaked the two books. He finally published them in 1858 in the form we know today. He added a third volume, also descriptive of Italy’s art and landscape, between the years 1867 and 1877.

By the time of the third Année, Liszt had greatly limited his public appearances as a pianist; his compositions became more contemplative, increasingly stretching the limits of tonal harmony. He enthusiastically supported young innovative composers and became an enthusiastic spokesman for the music of the future.

There is no geographical location called Vallée d’Obermann (The Valley of Obermann). Obermann is the name of a Romantic novel by Étienne Pivert de Sénancour (1770-1846), the story of a solitary and world-weary character who searches for a new home in a lonely valley in the Swiss Jura Mountains.

The score is headed by two quotations from the book describing Obermann’s torment and sense of helplessness. Another excerpt, from Byron’s Childe Harold, is also in the heading. Liszt captures the shifting moods, from gloomy and sinister to mystical and transcendent.

Liszt's student, the conductor and composer Edward Lassen (1830-1904), made the trio arrangement under Liszt's directive in 1880. Apparently, Camille Saint-Saëns had a hand in it as well.

Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano, Op. 63
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)

Composer, conductor, pianist and critic Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber is considered one of the founders of the Romantic movement in Germany, in particular with his opera Der Freischütz, premiered in 1821. Like so many composers of the nineteenth century, Weber had extensive literary interests and strong views on aesthetic theory and philosophy. He wrote both poetry and prose fiction, including an unfinished novel, Tonkünstlers Leben (Composer’s Life). He was a sometimes controversial essayist, particularly on opera. As an orchestrator he was an innovator, discovering and capitalizing on new characteristics and sonorities of many instruments, especially the horn and the clarinet.

Weber was born to Genovefa and Franz Anton Weber, a professional musician with extravagant pretensions, who appointed himself “Baron von Weber” borrowing the title of an extinct Austrian family. He also fancied himself another Leopold Mozart, loading his talented son with music lessons on various instruments and composition lessons with Michael Haydn, and taking his Wunderkind on tours of Europe. The fruits of Weber père’s campaign were a slew of unpublished works and at least one performed opera by the time Carl was 14.

Although Carl obtained his first professional post at age 18 as conductor of the Breslau opera, he could never quite shake off his father. In 1807 the family moved to Stuttgart, where in 1810 father and son were convicted of embezzlement (actually, creative “borrowing”) from his employer, the Duke Ludwig Friedrich Alexander, and of a military draft evasion scheme. After this brush with the law, there followed a period of what today would be called freelancing in various German cities and a lot of guest-conducting, especially in England.

Weber composed the Trio in 1818-19, probably in response to music-making evenings with friends in Prague. The Romantic tone of the opening is full of grand gestures of tempo and dynamic leaps. The Scherzo is a lively waltz.

The slow movement is subtitled "Shepherd's Lament" a reference to Goethe's poem about a lonely shepherd pining for love. The origin of the simple tune is from an 1804 collection of guitar songs (He was an accomplished guitarist), and weber works it into a set of variations. The cheerful finale, a light-hearted romp, gives all three instruments a chance to lead, but it is the flute that has the biggest voice.

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
wordpros@ mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com

Mainstage Chamber Concert • Thursday, July 27, 2023 • 7:30pm • Arkell Pavilion, SVAC