Charles Villiers Stanford(3) - Piano Trio No. 1 / No 2, Piano Quartet No 2

Charles Villiers Stanford - Piano Trio No. 1 (1889 / )

I. Allegro Grazioso - 00:00
II. Allegretto Con Moto - 10:29
III. Tempo Di Menuetto Ma Molto Moderato - 14:48
IV. Allegro Moderato Ma Con Fuoco - 22:45

As a composer of chamber music, an idiom he believed to be one of the most essential representations of 'absolute music', Stanford was prolific and enormously inventive. The Piano Trio No. 1 in E flat, Op. 35, was completed in 1889 and dedicated to the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, a personal friend. First performed at the Oxford Musical Union on 25th November 1889, it was given its first London hearing at Edward Dannreuther's chamber concerts at Orme Square, Bayswater in January 1890. As expansive technically and emotionally as the Piano Quintet in D minor, Op. 25, finished three years earlier for Joachim, the Trio is a spacious, confident work, full of organic artifice and an almost flawless sense of the trio idiom. Of particular note is the emphasis Stanford places on the lyrical dimension of the work. This is evident in the elegant second subject of the first movement and in the affecting pathos of the third movement. The second movement, marked Allegretto con moto, is a capriccio, the opening Schumannesque idea punctuating a series of highly contrasting episodes. The traditional dance movement, not a Scherzo in this case but a sedate Menuetto, is cast in C major and recalls the importance of that tonality in the first movement (especially at the point of recapitulation). In terms of its expressive profundity this somewhat unconventional movement also seems to take the place of the traditional slow movement. The finale, a turbulent sonata rondo, similarly makes much play on the C/E flat relationship through the striking initial statement of C minor at each recurrence of the rondo theme before E flat is restored.

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Piano Trio No.2 G Minor Op.73 (1899)

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Piano Quartet No. 2 (1913)

 

I. Andante - Allegro Moderato - 00:00
II. Adagio - 10:28
III. Scherzo - Allegro - 18:24
IV. Allegro Molto Moderato - 22:58

Stanford completed his Piano Quartet No. 2 in C minor, Op. 133, on 10 January 1913 at his Kensington home and it was given what was probably its only public performance by members of the Wesseley Quartet and the pianist Johanne Stockmarr at the Bechstein Hall (now better known as the Wigmore Hall) on 14 March 1914. A few weeks before, Stanford's Fourth Irish Rhapsody, a work enshrining both the composer's protests against Home Rule for Ireland and his support for Carson's cause in Ulster, had also been given its première in London at the Philharmonic Society. The Fourth Rhapsody has a serious, determined sense of purpose in both its lyrical demeanour and rhythmical drive, and the Piano Quartet No. 2 shares a similar disposition in the passionate gravity of its first movement, the thematic seeds of which lie in the brooding introduction. The two fine principal ideas in the exposition—a restive first subject in C minor and a wonderfully generous melody in E flat major—are skilfully transformed in the recapitulation, the first appearing in a glowing, languid C major, the second, entirely rescored in the minor (before the familiar opulent version is restored). The slow movement, which fluctuates metrically between 5/8 and 3/8, is inspired by Irish folk-song, an influence felt in much of Stanford's orchestral and chamber music. The spirit of the more turbulent central section of the slow movement re-emerges in the demonic Scherzo, a tour de force of polyphonic writing for the ensemble. The trio, a more robust, heroic statement, provides due contrast before the Scherzo material, reworked with breathless intensity, returns. The finale in C major exudes an air of confidence and well-being symbolized particularly by the broad, self-assurance of the opening cello melody. The movement is also infected by a cyclic dimension: with the second subject we hear deft yet fleeting reminiscences of the slow movement incorporated into the melodic material and, just prior to the coda, Stanford recalls the opening of the first movement in a cathartic transformation marked tranquillo.