Belfast Music Society Celebrity Concerts Programme

PROGRAMME LOWBURY PIANO TRIO Pauline Lowbury Ursula Smith Elizabeth Burley Allegretto in B flat, WoO 39 Piano Trio No. 2 Piano Trio in E flat, Op. 100 Supported by the GO ARTS COUNCIL violin 'cello - piano B - Saturday, 22nd March 1997 Elmwood Hall, University Road at 7.30pm Sponsored by The Friends of the BMS S SCIL - Donations gratefully received from Ulster Bank Ltd Stewarts Supermarkets Ltd. Beethoven Shostakovich Schubert NATIONAL FEDERATION OF MUSIC SOCIETIES NEMS

The material is given much contrapuntal treatment, before the movement ends quite gently. The brief scherzo is marked marcatissimo and pesante and is a typically sardonic Shostakovichian fast waltz, with a tune that sounds cheerful, yet there is a feeling it isn't quite what it seems. There is an attractive swinging theme in the central 'trio' sec- tion which provides some contrast, but no real respite from the music's relentless progress. The largo occupies a mere three pages of score, but the music moves very slowly, as befits a Passacaglia. The eight bar theme (the correct classical length) is presented in chords on the piano, after which it is repeated five times with different instrumental participa- tion. The last variation leads straight into the finale. Here the work's Jewish sym- pathies come to the surface; the second theme, indeed, sounds as if it had leapt from the pages of Fiddler on the Roof! The emotions portrayed here were important enough to the composer for him to quote this melody in the second movement of his autobiographical 8th quartet of 1960. Towards the end, the work's fugal opening is recalled (at a faster tempo), while the third movement's passacaglia theme dominates the closing bars. Piano trio no 2 in E flat, D929 (op 100) Franz Schubert 1797-1828 Allegro: andante con moto: scherzo (allegro moderato) and trio: allegro moderato On 6th March 1828, Schubert asked the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde for the use of their hall for a concert he wished to present of his own works. Permission was granted, and the concert went ahead three weeks later, before a packed and enthusiastic audience. But they were all friends of the composer; more significantly, the press virtually ignored the event, in fact there was no mention of it at all in the Viennese papers! Instead one could read that 'minor stars paled before the radiance of this comet in the musical heavens'; words referring, not to Schubert (who was probably included in the 'minor stars'), but to the young Paganini, who appeared in the city three days after Schubert's concert. The E flat trio was the main work in Schubert's concert; before the end of the year it had been heard again at an all-Schubert concert in Vienna, but this time it was held to raise the money for a memorial to him. Op 100, which Schubert composed towards the end of 1827, has regularly been unfavourably compared to its slightly earlier companion; drawing comparisons between the two has been a favourite pastime since Schumann described the B flat trio as 'passive, feminine and lyrical' and the E flat one as 'active, masculine and dramatic'. Most of the criticisms have been directed at the later trio's length and what is seen as Schubert's exces- sively repetitive use of his material. If these criticisms are fair - and listeners must make their own minds up on that score - they can only apply to the outer movements, as the two central ones are at least of equal stature to those in the earlier work. The slow movement is based on a melody on the cello that was alleged by one of the composer's friends to be that of a song 'see the sun is sinking' by the Swedish composer, Isaak Berg.

A copy of this song has recently come to light, and the similarities between the two melodies are apparently slight. In any case, the tune sounds thoroughly Schubertian. The scherzo, perhaps taking its cue from Haydn, is full of canonic imitation. The trio sec- tion has been described as 'a clog dance of peasants'. The outer movements are built on a much larger scale. The first movement is built on six quite brief motives, the first serving as a sort of motto for the whole movement, the third, a jaunty melody with much use of a repeated note figure, appearing in the unexpected key of B minor (though in Schubert can any key be described as unexpected?), while the last is a particularly attractive and gracious melody. Schubert obviously thought so too, for he proceeds to develop it at great length, to the exclusion of all the others. The finale is built on an even larger scale, though we mightn't guess that this was going to be the case from the movement's opening, with a simple, jaunty melody in 6/8 metre. The second main theme owes its character to its repeated note patterns - not inappropri- ately has it been likened to the strumming of a mandolin. The movement's masterstroke is the reappearance of the Swedish' theme something that was distinctly unusual in 1827, though within a few years was to become a popular unifying device for Romantic composers. dost vd 19d Alec Macdonald 1997 Copyright som si vinwi di od dw days dsban.cd2 gitnaloto induco Juodquonibiu odreads bos rolos a boissqqs sonia and bine 0800 pinog betsvides ylisuoliqoxs as diw loivolos s PEROR STRING QUARTET - box adot daw MDA sdi bure of aqueles now Y3.108 HTSASLIS bms nogudmali lust hiw st o bas grudaiba al die onsonoo olles othes 288 no map