Schumann: Piano Trio No. 3, Op. 110 - Burkhard: Piano Trio, Op. 43 - Denise Bidal, Hansheinz Schneeberger, Rolf Looser

Robert SCHUMANN: Piano Trio No. 3 in G Minor, Op. 110: I. Bewegt, doch nicht zu rasch – II. Ziemlich langsam – III. Rasch – IV. Kräftig mit Humor – Willy BURKHARD: Piano Trio, Op. 43

Denise Bidal, Piano
Hansheinz Schneeberger, Violin
Rolf Looser, Cello

Schumann — Piano Trio in G minor op. 110 (1851)

In 1851, the year of the composition of the Piano Trio in G minor op. 110, Schumann was settled in Düsseldorf where he assumed heavy and difficult duties: he was conductor, choir director, and also founded a chamber music society.

But soon, Schumann encountered the incomprehension of the Musikverein committee; discouraging conflicts ensued, to which were added other torments: the appearance of mental disorders that plunged the musician into anguish and depression. It was these increasingly severe and frequent troubles that would claim his life a few years later, at the age of forty-six (1856).

However, until 1854, nothing diminished Schumann’s creative imagination nor his power of realization. On the contrary, he was eager to release, in a true outpouring, the music that sang within him and obsessed him. It seems he had only to transcribe onto the staff works already fully formed within him, almost without his knowing. Thus, this final period saw the blossoming of numerous masterpieces, including this Trio op. 110, written in just a few days, from October 10 to 17, 1851.

“My music is the idealized expression of the movements of the soul,” wrote Schumann. Indeed, it seems to be the immediate transposition into the world of sound of the impulses of the heart, and in him, feelings existed as sound-ideas. His music makes the heart, in a way, audible.

Shaped by the ample construction, the “architecture” of a trio, the music nevertheless preserves the emotion that gave it birth.

Passion, momentum, the striving toward an ideal pervade the whole opening movement (Bewegt, doch nicht zu rasch), giving way at times to ineffable tenderness. The superimposition of various melodic patterns creates bold, rare, and new encounters that belong only to Schumann, appearing like wounds. One should note an impressive and characteristic pizzicato passage: a sort of hallucination, a vision of a fantastic world. The movement ends pianissimo: more precisely, it does not end — it fades, recedes, and vanishes like a dream.

In the second movement (Ziemlich langsam), full of inwardness and intimate tone, Schumann’s hypersensitivity appeals to our own, if we are to perceive its meaning. Carried by the harmonies entrusted to the piano, the violin and cello sing in turn, like an aspiration toward the ineffable. In this movement, the feverish and tormented middle section is poignant. The return of the opening, in extreme softness, takes on a new tone, both more meditative and laden with regret.

The third movement (Rasch) alternates the “refrain,” an example of the idée fixe, the obsession, with a “couplet”; a couplet that may be one of expressive outpouring, or on the contrary one that bursts forth in a heroic rhythm, like a vision. This movement exemplifies the role of the “unreal” in Schumann, the unreal becoming musical reality.

In the fourth movement (Kräftig mit Humor), Schumann lets his joy burst out, his whimsical verve in rhythms full of vitality. At times, they give way to a few measures of ecstasy, and the work concludes in the healthiest imaginable surge of momentum, ardor, and enthusiasm.

Willy Burkhard — Piano Trio op. 43 (1936)

Willy Burkhard was born on April 17, 1900 in Evilard (Bienne); he died on June 18, 1955 in Zurich. The wide scope of his work covers almost every musical genre, including opera. In his early Lieder, post-romantic exuberance is already transformed into a sober and condensed symbolism.

The Trio op. 43 by Willy Burkhard was composed in 1936, during a period when the composer was struggling with a very serious illness. This relatively short composition lies between two large-scale works: the oratorio Das Gesicht Jesajas (op. 41, 1935) and the cycle Das ewige Brausen after poems by Knut Hamsun (op. 46, 1936), the one visionary, the other reflecting the vibrant presence of nature.

The tension between these two poles, which marks almost all of Burkhard’s work, is found here in an extremely concentrated manner. Its form is in a single span; four highly heterogeneous ideas are presented and developed one after the other, with as much rigor as freedom, and ultimately, by complementing one another, constitute an indivisible whole of great plasticity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Burkhard