I had an odd thought this week when I was looking for a piece to listen to (my apologies to those of you who don’t like sentences which end in prepositions – should I have said “when I was looking for a piece to which to listen”?: I wondered if there were any classical music works out there where the composer was totally unknown. I ran various Google-searches on works by nameless composers, but I kept coming up with pieces by “unknown” composers, i.e. “not well known” – not completely unknown.
I found the Trio in A Major (for piano, violin and cello) that is “attributed to Brahms” so I thought I’d give it a try. A bit of the history of the piece is HERE, and the article explains why scholars believe that the work was most likely composed by Brahms. The Trio is composed in four movements:
The Moderato opens with a tranquil passage on piano played in thirds, and then it is shared with the cello. This passage is repeated now and again throughout the movement, and there was something about it that gave off just a hint of Rachmaninoff. It reminded me of a Rach melody that might turn up in a pop song by Gilbert O’Sullivan or in something akin to “Full Moon and Empty Arms” – but again, there was just a hint of this, and there was no depth to any line as lush and rich as something by the Rach. The better part of the movement was light and airy, but not so joyous as the A major opening to Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4. Overall, though, the mood is filled with contentment. There is a touch of drama after the first repeated section, but then the opening theme returns the trio to the serenity present throughout most of the movement. The second movement starts with a sneaky vivace that sounds a bit devious. It sweeps the listener to a calmer, lullaby-ic (is there such a word as “lullaby-ic”?) trio before returning to the more mischievous slinkiness of the piece’s opening. The third movement is, for the most part, peaceful, but with an added touch of mystery provided by the occasional use of a tango-like rhythm (instead of the straight eighth notes used throughout most of the movement, Brahms (or the unknown composer) threw in some eighth notes followed by a sixteenth rest and a sixteenth note) The final movement is marked as “presto,” but the use of many half notes and whole notes on the melody line with an underscore of more action below (with quarter notes and eighth notes) gives the illusion of a somewhat slower dynamic. Later, the addition of quarter notes followed by two eighth notes provides a bit of a rocking lilt – even more so later when dotted quarters are paired with eighth notes – and then the trio races to its vigorous end. Overall, I did like the work. I wouldn’t say that I loved it. When listening, nothing made me stop in my tracks, so to speak, like when I listened to Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto” or Schubert’s “Fantasie in F Minor” – but I did enjoy the work. It was very pleasant.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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