Zukerman Trio: Program Notes

(Zukerman Trio) Notes on the Program

By Aaron Grad LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born in Bonn, baptized on December 17, 1770 Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827 VARIATIONS ON ICH BIN DER SCHNEIDER KAKADU, OP. 121a Composed in 1803; 19 minutes For a composer in Beethoven’s day, writing a set of variations on a popular tune was the equivalent of recording a cover song, ensuring some instant familiarity and marketability. Beethoven did plenty of this early in his career, like when he borrowed Mozart’s “Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni for a set of woodwind variations from 1795. We don’t know exactly when Beethoven crafted his Variations on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu”—it might have been the 1790s, and no later than 1803. He adapted the melody from a popular singspiel, a type of comedy performed in German with a mix of spoken dialogue and songs, akin to today’s Broadway musicals. The composer Wenzel Müller had debuted The Sisters from Prague in 1794, introducing Viennese audiences to the silly but memorable song that begins, “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu” (“I am the tailor, Cockatoo”).

Beethoven wrote out the earliest surviving manuscript of his “Kakadu” Variations for piano trio around 1816 (not long after a revival of Müller’s show in Vienna), at which point he presumably updated and revised his original version. He arranged for the score to be published in 1824, indicating that he still stood by this tongue-in-cheek effort produced decades earlier.

The trio of piano, violin and cello prefaces the theme with a long introduction of the utmost seriousness.

After much suspense, the piano finally unveils the “Kakadu” tune in dry, pecking chords. Beethoven being Beethoven, he finds the most sublime possibilities within this trifle of a melody, especially in the slow, minor-key setting of the ninth variation. The 10th and final variation turns into a glorious fugue that leads to a grand coda.

ANTON ARENSKY Born in Novgorod, Russia, July 12, 1861 Died near Terioki, Finland, February 25, 1906 PIANO TRIO NO. 1 IN D MINOR, OP. 32 Composed in 1894; 30 minutes An influential composer and teacher, Anton Arensky occupied a central place in the family tree of Russian music. After studying with Rimsky-Korsakov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Arensky joined the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory, where his students included Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Glière (who in turn taught Prokofiev). The move to Moscow also brought Arensky into contact with Tchaikovsky, who befriended and mentored his young colleague.

It was Tchaikovsky, through three string quartets and the Piano Trio in A Minor, who had found a place in Russia for the formal chamber music traditions forged in the German-speaking world. After Tchaikovsky died in 1893, Arensky honored his mentor’s chamber music legacy with two large works of a memorial

nature, both from 1894. The String Quartet No. 2 paid tribute to Tchaikovsky himself, quoting one of his songs in the slow movement. And echoing the impetus of Tchaikovsky’s own Piano Trio, composed in memory of Nikolai Rubinstein, Arensky’s First Piano Trio honored the late Russian cellist Karl Davydov, a friend to both Arensky and Tchaikovsky.

Like Tchaikovsky’s trio, which strikes up an elegiac tone from the outset, Arensky’s D minor trio uses its moderately fast first movement as a vehicle for drawn-out, wistful melodies. Instead of accelerating and intensifying at the end, a slow coda deepens the sense of nostalgia. A capricious scherzo momentarily lightens the mood, setting up a contrast with the profound third movement, labeled Elegia. Bringing the late Davydov to mind, the cello is the first to play the heavy-hearted main theme, and both stringed instruments play with mutes, covering the sound with a tinge of muffled darkness in line with the music’s grieving character. Themes from the Elegia carry over into the finale, and another slow passage near the end threatens to leave the trio submerged fully in tragedy, until it regains its fiery spirit at the last instant.

JOHANNES BRAHMS Born in Hamburg, May 5, 1833 Died in Vienna, April 3, 1897 PIANO TRIO NO. 2 IN C MAJOR, OP. 87 Composed in 1880-82; 30 minutes The first work of chamber music that Brahms issued publicly was his Piano Trio No. 1, composed as a 20year-old after his pivotal introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann (both of whom had composed groundbreaking trios already). 26 years later, Brahms returned to the format of trio for piano, violin and cello, starting two different drafts that he shared with his old friend Clara. He ended up scrapping one and waiting another two years to finish the other, which he published and debuted in 1882.

The Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major is remarkably focused and sparing in its use of musical material, much like the “middle period” works from Brahms’ ultimate idol, Beethoven. In the Allegro moderato first movement, the violin and cello often work in tandem, either spaced out in octaves, as in the naked opening passage, or moving together in clean harmony. The piano part is similarly stripped down, with its own octave patterns that place two-beat groupings against the three-beat pulse.

The Andante con moto second movement resumes that distilled approach, with the strings again moving together in octaves while the piano counters with a simple but rhythmically contradictory accompaniment. This theme serves as the basis for a set of variations, with each one seizing upon a core gesture in true Beethovenian fashion. The most aggressive variation, with its pounding chords and staccato declarations, gives way to the most tender, reframed in the parallel major key.

With its presto tempo, minor-key harmonies and delicate textures (played “always very softly and lightly,” as per an instruction in the piano part), the third movement recalls Mendelssohn’s bewitching scherzos. When Brahms sent a draft to Clara Schumann, she commented that the contrasting trio section, with its C-major melody in a more comfortable tempo, seemed “not important enough” and “lacking in charm” after the “entrancing” and “delightfully varied” scherzo; Brahms disagreed and kept the passage anyway.

The finale once again begins with the strings in octaves and the piano playing an elemental accompaniment. Before we’ve even left the first measure, an unsettled diminished-seventh chord disturbs the home key of C major, and that sound returns many times to hold suspense until the end. Š 2019 Aaron Grad