Absolute Sound

The string quartet has long
been regarded as chamber
music’s primo subgenre, from
its beginnings serious in
musical intent with a tightly
homogeneous sound. The
piano trio—the combination of piano,
violin, and cello—developed 250 years
ago as something quite different and then
metamorphosed up through the modern
era. By the close of the Eighteenth
Century, every middle-class European
home had a piano and, especially for
young women, some fluency at the keyboard
was considered a sign of “refinement.”
The earliest piano trios were
essentially keyboard sonatas, with parts
for the other players more or less optional.
The material was lighter in tone and,
by virtue of the forces involved, more
open in texture than a string quartet. In
this age before recorded sound, the piano
trio was exploited as a way of bringing
larger-scale forms home from the concert
hall: arrangements of popular symphonic
works appeared in large numbers for
ambitious amateurs to tackle on a Sunday
afternoon. But the great composers would
soon reclaim the medium as an opportunity
for full artistic expression.
In terms of professional ensembles,
the piano trio also differs from the string
quartet. While even casual classical listeners
can rattle off the names of a halfdozen
renowned quartets—the Juilliard,
Guarneri, Tokyo, Emerson, etc.—a comparable
list of piano trios is harder to
come up with. Part of the problem is
that some of the most esteemed trios
over the years have simply utilized the
names of the three players for their
moniker, sounding a bit like law firms
BASIC REPERTOIRE
The Piano Trio
Andrew Quint
in the process: Stern-Rose-Istomin or
Ma-Ax-Kim. But more importantly,
with a few exceptions, the trio hasn’t
been the main focus of musical activity
for such players, and artistic values could
suffer. The “million dollar trio” of
Rubinstein, Heifetz, and Piatigorsky, in
the words of one writer, “played more
like a thousand dollars.”
Though mono-era recordings of the
venerated Cortot-Thibault-Casals Trio
justifiably remain in the catalog, the
most important ensemble by far has
been the Beaux Arts Trio. It’s possible to
survey most of the consequential piano
trio literature quite well listening only to
this group. They formed in 1955 at the
Berkshire Music Festival, originally
with pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist
Daniel Guilet, and Bernard Greenhouse
on cello. Guilet remained until 1969
and Greenhouse until 1987. The string
chairs have turned over more frequently
in recent years, though always attracting
top-notch musicians—the current ones
are Daniel Hope (violin) and Antonio
Meneses (cello). The “glue” of this
ensemble for going on half a century,
providing a genuine source of artistic
continuity, has been Pressler, whose
playing has lost very little of its assured
grace and insight.
On to the music, then.
Haydn wrote around 30 piano trios
and with some a Baroque model is still in
evidence, the violin and cello having a
subsidiary function. The later trios are of
a quality comparable to his mature symphonies
and string quartets—tuneful,
masterfully constructed pieces—and, as
in the G major Trio, Hob. XV:25, the
violin is episodically “emancipated” to
48 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ JUNE/JULY 2004