Romantic Chamber Music

Romantic Chamber Music for Piano Trio was Programme IV of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s 2016 Songs of Apollo season: an evening of piano trios by Niels Gade, Clara Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn – three composers who all lived and worked in Leipzig – played by the Phoenix Piano Trio. It took place on Sunday 12 June 2016 at 6.00 pm, an earlier start than usual, at the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, in aid of the Rudolf Kempe Society International Young Artists Platform.

The Patron, Dame Judi Dench, welcomed the audience to “Romantic chamber music – pure!” from the first half of the 19th century, taking them “to the heart of Europe, the German city of Leipzig”. The programme book’s cover showed Mendelssohn’s own sketch of the view towards the Hebrides and Dunollie Castle.

Performers

The Phoenix Piano Trio – formed in 2010, the trio presented all of Beethoven’s piano trios in London and Oxford in 2011 alongside five new commissions, made its Wigmore Hall debut in 2012 and released a live CD from its “Beyond Beethoven” series with the “Archduke” Trio and Op. 70 No. 2.

• Jonathan Stone – violin; also a member of the Doric String Quartet.
• Christian Elliott – cello; a soloist and member of several leading chamber ensembles.
• Sholto Kynoch – piano; partner to many string players and singers, and founder and artistic director of the Oxford Lieder Festival.

Programme

• Niels Gade – Novelletten, Op. 29, for piano trio (1853)
• Clara Schumann – Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (1846)
  1. Allegro moderato
  2. Scherzo and Trio
  3. Andante
  4. Allegretto

Interval

• Felix Mendelssohn – Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 (1845)
  1. Allegro energico e con fuoco
  2. Andante espressivo
  3. Scherzo – Molto allegro quasi presto
  4. Finale – Allegro appassionato

About the programme

The programme book set the scene in Leipzig, a trading city at the crossing of two medieval routes that became, by the early 19th century, a rival to Vienna as a centre of music and publishing.

• Niels Gade (1817–1890), born in Copenhagen, sent his first symphony to Mendelssohn, who conducted it in Leipzig in 1843. Gade moved there to teach at the Conservatory and assist at the Gewandhaus, conducted the premiere of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in 1845, and briefly succeeded him as the orchestra’s chief conductor before war between Prussia and Denmark sent him home; he became the most important Danish musician of his day.
• Clara Schumann (1819–1896), driven hard as a child prodigy by her father Friedrich Wieck, married Robert Schumann against his fierce opposition, supported their eight children through an international career as a pianist, and saw her work as a composer overshadowed for a century. Her Piano Trio in G minor of 1846 is widely seen as her masterpiece.
• Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, wrote the Octet and the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture before he was twenty. As conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1835 he transformed the craft of conducting, revived Bach’s great choral works and, in 1843, founded the Leipzig Conservatory with Robert Schumann and Ignaz Moscheles among its teachers. Chamber music, the notes concluded, remained one of his favourite ways of making music, and in it he gave us “some of the finest music of all times”.

The concert fell in the week of Rudolf Kempe’s birthday (14 June). The programme book also announced the Society’s August 2016 master class in German Lied repertoire with Joan Rodgers, Gary Matthewman and Cordula Kempe.

Credits

• Patron: Dame Judi Dench; Artistic Director: Cordula Kempe
• Publicity, printing and recording: Max Ross