The opus number is misleading. After Beethoven achieved some degree of popular success in Vienna as a pianist and composer, he revived a number of early works for publication under a later opus number. While the trio was published in 1806, it was actually written in 1794 or 1795 while Beethoven was still taking lessons to develop his compositional skills.

Beethoven began writing wind music while he was still in Bonn. Arriving in Vienna in 1792, he found the city in a rage for wind music. The Viennese public never tired of convivial music for wind ensembles, and the emperor himself had his own wind ensemble, the Imperial Harmonie. Prague had become a training center for wind instrumentalists, and several were attracted to Vienna to perform at the court or in public concerts.

In December, 1793, Beethoven heard such a concert by three brothers from Prague � Johann, Franz and Philipp Teimer � who played music by a fourth Prague musician, Johann Wendt. The event was so successful that Beethoven was inspired to produce over the next eight years 12 chamber pieces for wind ensembles or involving wind players, the most famous of which was his Septet. Op. 20. Then, in 1802, he lost interest.

This trio was one of two pieces, modeled after a terzetto by Wendt, that Beethoven composed for the unusual combination of two oboes and English horn. (The other was a set of variations on the duet "La ci darem la mano" from Mozart�s Don Giovanni.) When the trio was published in 1806, it was also issued in two arrangements � for two violins and viola and as a sonata for piano and violin. These arrangements were made with the composer�s permission to exploit the lively market for chamber music for strings.

This evening we hear the version for two violins and viola. There are four movements. The first is in sonata form, with two themes, one skipping and one flowing, followed by an elaborate development. The second movement, an adagio, is songful, in phrases suggesting an opera aria. The third movement is entitled "Minuet," but the main section is in the fast rhythm and animated style of the scherzo form that was to become a Beethoven hallmark. The trio concludes with a rondo, whose repeated refrain alternates with three contrasting episodes.

Arno Babajanian is an unfamiliar name in the United States, but he is a national hero in his native Armenia and is well known in Russia where he spent much of his time when Armenia was part of the Soviet Union. He won recognition not only as a composer but also as a concert pianist and teacher. In 2003, a monument to Babajanian was unveiled in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and this year Armenians are celebrating his 85^th birthday not only in Armenia but also in Russia, France and the U.S.

Babajanian was born in Yerevan and studied at the Yerevan Conservatory. He then studied at the Moscow Conservatory and at the House of Armenian Culture in Moscow under Heinrich Litinsky, one of the most influential composer-teachers in the Soviet Union. In 1950 he returned to Armenia to teach at the Yerevan Conservatory, and from that base undertook concert tours throughout the Soviet Union and Europe. In 1971, he was named a People�s Artist of the USSR.

Much of Babajanian�s music was rooted in Armenian folk music and folklore. His father had been an accomplished folk musician, and at the Yerevan Conservatory his teachers instilled in him a sense of Armenian musical history and insisted that he study the folk traditions of his country. At the time, Armenia was undergoing a musical renaissance with the establishment of the Armenian Phiharmonic and Opera Theatre, and the Philharmonic gave the premiere of his youthful Symphony No. 1.

Babajanian�s music was initially a blending of Armenian folk elements and the brilliant virtuoso style of Aram Khachaturian, also an Armenian, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The folk influence is seen in his heavy use of folk ornamentation and the irregular rhythms of peasant music. His later works were influenced by the chromaticism (use of half-steps) of Prokofiev, the complex rhythms of Bart�k, and the 12-tone system of Schoenberg.

The Piano Trio was considered one of Babajanian�s major works. Movses Pogossian, the violinist of the Baird Trio, has provided the following additional information about the trio for this evening�s performance:

"The Piano Trio was written in 1952 and was dedicated to violinist David Oistrakh and cellist Sviatoslav Knushevitsky. It was originally to be premiered by Lev Oborin, the third member of the Oistrakakh-Oborin-Knushevitsky Trio, but it was the composer, himself a formidable pianist, who ended up premiering the work with Oistrakh and Knushevitsky in the packed Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. The performance was highly successful, and led to the instant fame of the piece in the Soviet Union and, especially, Armenia.

"The trio is a passionate three-movement romantic piece with memorable melodies and virtuoso writing for all three instruments, especially the piano. The first movement, an allegro in sonata form, starts, in a dramatic unison of the strings, with the trio�s main theme, which appears in every movement. The outer movements are in the key of F sharp minor, while the soulful middle movement is in C major.

"The last movement, written mostly in a fiery 5/8 meter, alternates two main contrasting themes, one of aggressive and the other of lyrical character, and culminates in the last monumental return of the main theme of the work, ending then in a short stormy coda."

 

Elliott Schwartz is arguably Maine�s most prominent living composer. His music is played throughout the United States and Europe, and the Library of Congress is now developing an archive of his manuscripts, correspondence and other documents.

Schwartz recently retired from the Bowdoin College faculty, where he was the Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music and has served since 1964, including 12 years as department chair. He has also held visiting appointments at the University of California (San Diego and Santa Barbara), Ohio State University, and Cambridge University (UK), and extended residencies at Oxford and Harvard.

His music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Houston Symphonies, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Tanglewood, De Ijsbreker (Amsterdam), and the Bath Festival (UK). In 2006, he celebrates his 70^th birthday with appearances as featured guest composer at the New England Conservatory, the Library of Congress (Washington, DC ), the ACA Festival in New York, Butler University, the University of Minnesota, and the Royal Academy of Music (London).

In addition to composing, Schwartz has written widely on musical topics; he is co-author with Daniel Godfrey of Music since 1945, and co-editor with Barney Childs of the anthology Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music.

For this evening�s performance of Vienna Dreams, Schwartz has provided the following program note:

"In my 1998 composition Vienna Dreams for viola, clarinet and piano, fragments of three Viennese chamber works � the Mozart trio for these same instruments, the Schubert �Arpeggione� sonata, and the Brahms clarinet-cello-piano trio � intersect and interact with each other in a state of free association. While a number of quotes are fairly literal, and may be recognizable, quite a few have been distorted, pulverized, and grafted onto other Viennese neighbor-fragments.

"Moreover, there is another prominent level of quotation, suggesting that the three main sources (Mozart, Schubert, Brahms) are being filtered through the sensibility � perhaps the �memory� � of a fourth Viennese composer, Gustav Mahler.

"Finally, a colleague has pointed out to me that the overall harmonic language of Vienna Dreams may reveal the presence (or ghost) of a fifth Viennese figure � Arnold Schoenberg � hovering over the entire fabric."

 

Victor Carr, Jr., writing in Classics Today, adds the following comment:

"Elliott Schwartz�s compositional style has been described as �post-eclecticism� for its use of quotations from the enormously wide range of music created in the 20^th century and earlier. These fragments are all filtered through Schwartz�s individualistic musical language, which though primarily 12-tone is so shot through with consonance that it sounds like atonal music that�s been stretched to the brink of tonality, rather than the other way around. Vienna Dreams cleverly weaves strands into such a complex tonal overlay that it�s often difficult to discern the source melodies even as you feel that they are definitely �there� somewhere."

 

In 1890, Brahms announced to his friends that he was retiring from musical composition. Although only 57, he had aged considerably, and he found the task of composing fatiguing. Further, he feared that his declining physical strength might impair his creative faculties. The following March, however, a visit to the German city of Meiningen persuaded him to change his mind and led instead to his final four chamber works, all focused on the clarinet.

Although a small city, Meiningen had one of the finest court orchestras in Europe, and Brahms went there occasionally to hear his works played. In 1891, he was impressed by the unusually beautiful playing of its principal clarinetist, Richard M�hlfeld. M�hlfeld had joined the orchestra in 1873 as a violinist, but after teaching himself to play the clarinet, he had become one of the most accomplished clarinetists in Europe. Brahms was so awed by both M�hlfeld�s artistry and the musical possibilities of the clarinet that he decided to write some chamber music for the artist and his instrument.

During the summer, consequently, while vacationing at Ischl near Salzburg, Brahms produced two works for M�hlfeld � the Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op.114, and the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115. So successful were these works that three summers later Brahms wrote two more pieces for M�hlfeld � the Clarinet Sonatas in F Minor and E flat Major, Op. 120. Then in 1895, to play the sonatas in public, Brahms and M�hlfeld went on a concert tour of several German cities.

The trio is overshadowed nowadays by the quintet � it is, indeed, lighter in texture and emotional weight. But it demonstrates Brahms�s mastery in the balance he achieved with such disparate instruments as the clarinet and the cello. The cello, in fact, spends much of the time in the tenor clef so that it might converse with the clarinet on equal terms. As one of Brahms�s friends commented, "It is though the instruments were in love with each other."

Brahms obtained this balance in the first movement by assigning the presentation of both themes to the cello, but then repeating and expanding them with the clarinet. After the development, moreover, the clarinet restates the first theme in completely different dress � by extending the time value of the notes and in broken phrases. In the coda, the two instruments join in swift, whispered scale passages, ascending and descending.

The slow movement is only 54 measures long, but achieves a wide range of feeling in its short length. This time the clarinet presents the main theme, with the cello repeating and continuing it. The second theme is a broad phrase for the clarinet, initially against a cello pizzicato accompaniment.

The third movement, appropriately marked Andantino grazioso, is an easy-going waltz � it reminds some listeners of Brahms�s Liebeslieder waltzes. The middle section features clarinet runs in a rocking rhythm.

The finale is deceptive rhythmically, alternating and mingling 2/4 and 6/8 meters often in the same measure. The cello presents both themes, but the clarinet quickly joins in, and at the end the two instruments unite in a final statement of the first theme, now in a definite 2/4.

� 2006 by Willard J. Hertz