Wigmore Hall
Haydn:
Piano Trio in E-flat
minor, Hob. XV:31
Dvořák:
Piano Trio in E minor,
op.90, ‘Dumky’
Schubert:
Piano Trio no.2 in E-flat
major, D 929
Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian (violin)
Raphaël Pidoux (cello)
Vincent Coq (cello)
What a splendid way to round
off the musical year: generous, immediate performances of three piano trios from
the Wanderer Trio at the Wigmore Hall. And where better a place to start than
with Haydn, who, if he did not quite invent the genre, soon brought it to a
level of invention never previously hinted at and never to be surpassed? The
1795 E-flat minor Trio is a curious work, as experimental as any, belying
claims of a relative classicism to the composer’s (relative) old age. That was
how it sounded here too, its twists, turns, and ultimate cohesion in or under
hands that, whilst safe, were anything but dull or complacent.
The key itself – of the first
movement, that is, the second and final movement moving to E-flat major – is unusual, even for Haydn. (It
is difficult to imagine Mozart opting for it, save perhaps as a rare episode.)
Its quiet dignity, at least as used here, was conveyed with a strange melancholy
that put one in mind of the Sturm und
Drang Haydn, albeit distilled. Whenever the rondo theme – yes, the first movement is a rondo – reached its
Neapolitan moment, one felt the harmony’s historical roots in earlier
eighteenth-century Naples, yet also knew its kinship with Haydn’s own double
variations for piano in F minor/major and certain aspects of the musical future
to come: to be, as it were, invented. The B major episode proved especially
striking, moving enharmonically down a major third, offering both in work and
in performance a striking pre-sentiment of Schubert. (Yes, I remain enough of
an historian to damn such forward-looking teleology in abstracto, but here in context…) Brighter, yet still in the
shadow: there was a rightness here that brooked no response. Nor did the formal
freedoms and ingenuities of the second movement, played, liked its predecessor,
with string tone and style speaking very much of what we may probably still yet
call the Franco-Flemish school. There was, no need to exaggerate in lamentable
contemporary ‘period’ fashion; Haydn can speak perfectly well for himself,
whatever the art that conceals such performative art. In tonal journey and
detailed interest alike, the Wanderer players commanded and held our attention.
Dvořák’s Dumky Trio immediately announced a different, if not unrelated,
world, the players’ tone and conceptual unashamedly full-blooded in a
Romanticism that was yet far from generic, but specific to the particular
language and flavour of composer and work. We found ourselves in the world of
the public concert rather than the connoisseur’s chamber. Moreover, each
musician’s performance possessed the character one might, however erroneously,
associate with a group of ‘star’ soloists; ensemble playing and understanding
reminded us that this was very much an established rather than an occasional
ensemble. Rhetoric, character, and form played vividly before our ears, whether
in the quasi-rustic – how ‘quasi’ remains a matter for debate – spirit of the ‘dumka’
dance or the comforts of the mitteleuropäisch
coffee house. Indeed, quicksilver shifts of mood that registered just as
strongly as any underlying unity. For instance, in the second of the six
movements, we heard a melancholy that spoke in context of affinity with Haydn,
whilst retaining its particularity; no sooner had we done so, though, than the
music had wrenched our thoughts and emotions elsewhere. If gear changes were
sometimes obvious, that was as much a reflection of the score ‘itself’ as its
performance. There was no denying the charm, the dancing fury, or the Bohemian ‘soul’
– however much, in the cold light of day, we may wish to deconstruct such
notions.
Schubert’s E-flat major Trio
made for a satisfying tonal reprise and development – among many other virtues.
The Wanderer Trio brought to the first movement and much else a buoyant charm that
assisted both integration and development: here most noticeable, aptly enough,
in the development section, but also in the second development of the
recapitulation. The Andante con moto
offered a trudge that was brisk yet never brusque, in keeping both with
Schubert’s tempo marking and, more important, the ineffable character to his
writing. Imbued with dignity and passion, the performance proved flexible too,
without losing track of a fundamental pulse. These were fine guides indeed to a
very particular tonal winter’s journey. A well-sprung scherzando proved playful
yet never insouciant. As expansive as its companions in its own way, it lacked –
like them – any sense of the longueurs that can plague lesser accounts. The
finale seemed, in a strange sense, to bring us back once again to the spirit of
Haydn: what he might have done in an
absurd, hypothetical sense – until, that is, it was very much what he would not
have done. The music looked forward too, to Schumann, to Brahms, to Dvořák, yet
never sounded untrue to itself. Technical excellence, emotional affinity, and a
gift for formal and thematic integration proved complementary in a fine
conclusion to a fine concert – save, that is, for an energetic encore of the
finale to Haydn’s so-called ‘Gypsy’ Trio.
