BaL 7.03.15 - Clara Schumann: Piano Trio in G minor Op. 17

[ardcarp]

I enjoyed hearing a work [and about a work] I did not know, and I always enjoy DON's technical insights. There is of course his lightness of approach too, e.g. "They can certainly turn a corner without spilling the drinks". There was one little inconsistency, which is very minor except insofar as it touches on something that I think about quite a lot. He put some pianistic mis-readings of the score down to 'music colleges getting rid of their harmony teachers'. A little later he praises Clara for her originality in starting a musical 'sentence' with a 2nd inversion chord, and wonders if this came about because women did not have the same musical education as men.

As one who, as a student, wrote God-knows-how-many-part Palestrina, Bach-style fugal expositions+invertible counterpoint, pastiches of anything from Mozart to Strauss...all very badly no doubt....I often wonder whether people so trammelled are less likely to be 'original' when composing; and on the other hand I do sometimes wonder if a little learning might inform some latterday compositional efforts. It's a tricky one.

Personally, and despite DON, I think we can assume that Clara S. and Fanny M. were fully acquainted with the musical 'rules' prevailing at the time. Clearly they were totally au fait with current trends in musical language. DON did concede that he was more likely to be 'surprised' by Clara than by Robert.

Despite all the above drivel, I hope we may hear Clara's piano trio more often in the concert hall. Good to hear that there was also a woman piano maker...Streicher. I never knew that, but it seems appropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannette_Streicher

[gradus]

Interesting review/lecture/tutorial. DON is a details man and I am unable to hear many of the wrong things that he highlights but I'm jolly glad he flatters at least one of his listeners. The trio itself is quite wonderful and unknown to me and heard 'blind', I'd have guessed a lesser-known work by R Schumann.
Altogether an excellent BAL.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

DON seemed to be suggesting that learning harmony is good for performers (because then they would understand the correct notes that they should play) but bad for composers (because it leads them into writing the sort of harmony that can be deduced by performers who have learnt harmony) ... I think.

[teamsaint]

DON seemed to be suggesting that learning harmony is good for performers (because then they would understand the correct notes that they should play) but bad for composers (because it leads them into writing the sort of harmony that can be deduced by performers who have learnt harmony) ... I think.

I thought that he was suggesting, in general, and with your examples, that more university/conservatoire level teachers was a good thing....

[ardcarp]

DON seemed to be suggesting that learning harmony is good for performers (because then they would understand the correct notes that they should play) but bad for composers (because it leads them into writing the sort of harmony that can be deduced by performers who have learnt harmony) ... I think.

Why couldn't I have put it simply like that?

[BBMmk2]

I loved hearing this BaL, although imcomplete one, so further listening is required. What a pity there is a distinction of sexism with composers

[Nick Armstrong]

It is very rare I scale your dizzy heights

Oh pish tush, anton...!

Interesting review/lecture/tutorial. DON is a details man and I am unable to hear many of the wrong things that he highlights but I'm jolly glad he flatters at least one of his listeners. The trio itself is quite wonderful and unknown to me and heard 'blind', I'd have guessed a lesser-known work by R Schumann.
Altogether an excellent BAL.

Yes I agree, always an amusing, instructive and challenging listen, old DON! - and like you, most of his 'bloopers' escaped me, save the wrong note in bar 2 (and the repeat ) of one of the versions. But the others, not at all - even when DON butted in to one of the extracts with his "Coming up!!" Perhaps some of his singing or whistling, heard in previous BaLs, might have helped ....

I could do without the scherzo of this piece but the rest is good stuff.

Reading the debate above and listening to DON railing against the slapdash playing on many of the versions under consideration, made me think not for the first time that composers whose works have suffered the 'second-rate' judgment of history and/or critics, labour under a second handicap - that their attempted rediscovery is often at the hands of performers who are... ahem... not in the first rank. This always seems a particular handicap with vocal music - but with all sorts of music, we all know how dull playing can sometimes make even a masterpiece seem ordinary. There's a kind of vicious circle at work. (There are some happy exceptions - I'm thinking of my recent discovery of Chabrier, in the hands of Neeme Jarvi and the Suisse Romande Orchestra on Chandos).

Perhaps for that reason, the version that caught my ear and may well catch my cash was the reading on Tudor by Joseph Silverstein and friends. I didn't fancy either of the two finalists in DON's survey - the runners-up sounded lack-lustre, and I didn't like the acoustic or recorded sound of the 'live' winners.

[Don Petter]

Reading the debate above and listening to DON railing against the slapdash playing on many of the versions under consideration, made me think not for the first time that composers whose works have suffered the 'second-rate' judgment of history and/or critics, labour under a second handicap - that their attempted rediscovery is often at the hands of performers who are... ahem... not in the first rank. This always seems a particular handicap with vocal music, but with all sorts of music, we all know how dull playing can sometimes make even a masterpiece seem ordinary. There's a kind of vicious circle at work.

I think you are right, but 'twas not always thus. The Beaux Arts Trio recorded the work in 1971, and back in the early fifties the Mannes-Gimpel-Silva Trio (A highly regarded trio at that time*) recorded it on Brunswick, coupled with Beethoven's Piano Trio No.8, Woo.39.

*

http://www.amazon.com/Leopold-Mannes-Bronislav-Booking-Memorabilia/dp/B00NQJUEIK

I greatly enjoyed the BaL, though with six (or more) recordings already, nothing therein made me want to acquire another.

[Barbirollians]

Beaux Arts must be long out of the catalogue I assume but I agree with Caliban I kept thinking what would a first rate trio make of this ?

Perhaps Martha Argerich could add it to a Lugano programme !

[Lento]

I wish DON would wear his scholarship a little more lightly and concentrate on getting the main points across in a slightly more (sorry) accessible way. Sarah Walker last week included what seemed to me an appropriate amount of detail without getting bogged down, though I appreciate that the textural discrepancies which so exercised DON would not occur so much in the Schubert.

[verismissimo]

... Reading the debate above and listening to DON railing against the slapdash playing on many of the versions under consideration, made me think not for the first time that composers whose works have suffered the 'second-rate' judgment of history and/or critics, labour under a second handicap - that their attempted rediscovery is often at the hands of performers who are... ahem... not in the first rank. This always seems a particular handicap with vocal music...

Particularly so with the very first-rate Haydn's operas IMO, Cali...

[knodge41]

The Beaux Arts Trio recording can be heard on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/user/lrantamo/playlist/12vmJq5dnHZUzO7ibuNDxU

[Barbirollians]

It is also available to download I see - I wonder why no mention of it in the BAL ?

[Alison]

The Florestans should reconvene and record this one!

[Pabmusic]

...Reading the debate above and listening to DON railing against the slapdash playing on many of the versions under consideration, made me think not for the first time that composers whose works have suffered the 'second-rate' judgment of history and/or critics, labour under a second handicap - that their attempted rediscovery is often at the hands of performers who are... ahem... not in the first rank. This always seems a particular handicap with vocal music - but with all sorts of music, we all know how dull playing can sometimes make even a masterpiece seem ordinary. There's a kind of vicious circle at work. (There are some happy exceptions - I'm thinking of my recent discovery of Chabrier, in the hands of Neeme Jarvi and the Suisse Romande Orchestra on Chandos)...

How right you are. As a lifelong promoter of the less-known I know how frustrating it is to find something genuinely rare played but adequately by the Little Steeping-on-the-Wold Sinfonia.*** There's another twist, though. Even if a 'name' does perform it, it's still an unknown work, and you often detect signs of caution in the playing. Perhaps it needs an ensemble to become thoroughly 'at home' with the piece before it's recorded - but how often can that happen?

There's a case of confirmation bias lurking here, too (this piece is not 'great' or it would be played more often; therefore, I won't play it - thus adding to its infrequency, and proving that it is not 'great').

***[Any resemblance to a real musical ensemble is of course purely imaginary - perhaps a lawyer in a suitable legal field might advise (but I am skint).]