By Robert Croan
Franz Schubert’s two late-in-life piano trios, both composed in 1827, are among the most challenging works in the chamber music repertory. Profound and sprawling, each taking upwards of 45 minutes to perform, they embody the composer’s deepest, most heartfelt thoughts, in his most advanced compositional style.
The second of three summer chamber music programs by South Florida Symphony Orchestra members [heard June 13 at Fort Lauderdale’s Center for Spiritual Living] featured Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major (Op. 100, D. 929), in a remarkable, rousing rendition that kept the listeners rapt and brought the near-capacity audience to its feet for a much-deserved ovation at the end.
Each of the three participants — pianist Catherine Lan, violinist Huifang Chen and cellist Claudio Jaffé — is a first-rate musician, but in combination, their obvious joy in making music together in this intimate setting made the concert an uplifting experience on both side of the candlelit footlights.
Schubert’s grand-scale late works have been praised for their “heavenly lengths” and criticized for those very same assets. Part of the reason lies in his way with the so-called sonata form structures codified by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Whereas the earlier classicists typically took one or two themes and fragmented them in a kaleidoscopic development, going through numerous key changes before recapitulating to a musical home base, Schubert was prone to use more themes, and longer ones, developing them almost verbatim with small variants on each hearing.
The opening movement of Schubert’s E-flat Piano Trio exemplifies this, with three significant themes, each divided into two parts (some analysts say it has six themes), and lots of repetition. The genius of this composer, however, is in the way he always manages to take the ear by surprise, with an unexpected harmony, a slight twist in a cadence, or a soft ending to a phrase that leads us to expect a fuller voicing.
The SFSO players took a dramatic approach, digging into the melodies with rhythmic drive and reveling in the contrasts of phrase shapes and volume. It was also notable how well these three artists matched each other in sound level (although Schubert sometimes makes the piano, in Orwellian terms, just a little more equal than the others) and in unanimity of expression. Lan’s keyboard work was strong, authoritative, while Chen was appropriately incisive, establishing a durable ensemble rapport for the work’s entire four movements.
The Andante that follows showcases the cello, again as a leader among equals, intoning a haunting melody of a Swedish folk song that has been used in numerous movies and TV dramas, among them Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and Liv Ullmann’s Miss Julie. Jaffé’s sound was that of a mellifluous baritone, his phrasing that of an ardent lover — the more so when this tune returned in the final movement.
The third-movement Scherzo is an off-kilter waltz, with a raucous mid-section that the players attacked with relish. But Schubert saved his most lavish musical thoughts for the lengthy and rambling finale, which sums up his resources in a highly emotional crescendo. Here, the violin soared, the cello sang mellifluously and the piano reached quasi-symphonic dimensions without sacrificing beauty of tone or clarity of texture.
Florence Price (1887-1953), the first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major orchestra, is finally coming into her own, after many works long considered lost have come to light. SFSO paid her homage at the opening with an engaging rendition of her brief Fantasie in G minor for Violin and Piano, from 1933. Chen and Lan gave a colorful account of the composer’s amalgam of soloistic virtuosity with spiritual melodies and classical tradition.
In between Price’s tiny gem and the giant Schubert oeuvre, the trio performed the less consequential but mildly ingratiating Piano Trio in G major by Claude Debussy — a student work discovered in the 1980s, that owes a lot to his mentors Saint-Saëns (for its syrupy salon sentimentality) and Tchaikovsky (for the balletic Nutcracker-ish quality of its pizzicato scherzo). It’s worth an occasional hearing, and the music is hardly likely to encounter better promoters than these keen and eager enthusiasts.
The third and last of SFO’s summer chamber music series will feature Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor and Dvorak’s String Quintet No. 2: July 24, at the Coral Gables Museum; and July 25, at Fort Lauderdale’s Center for Spiritual Living. Details: southfloridasymphony.org, or call 954-522-8445.