Savannah Music Festival LIVE Presents: Schubert's E-Flat Piano Trio
From: Savannah Music Festival LIVE
Series: Savannah Music Festival LIVE - Season Three
Length: 59:03
Original air date: week of August 2, 2010
While it's hard to give a satisfactory definition of "genius," it nearly always happens that artistic genius expresses itself in youth. With the greatest of geniuses there follows an extended period of prodigious activity at the highest level, which seldom sustains its fire throughout a long life. Some, like Franz Schubert, are taken at the height of their youthful genius, in the midst of frenetic activity, and their early death always begs the question, "what might have been." In this episode, we listen to a 2010 performance of one of Schubert's great masterpieces, the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, played by David Finckel, Wu Han and Philip Setzer. That work is preceded by a 2008 SMF performance of Schubert's String Trio in B-flat, D. 471, performed by Benny Kim, Carla Maria Rodrigues and Keith Robinson.
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Piece Description
Original air date: week of August 2, 2010
While it's hard to give a satisfactory definition of "genius," it nearly always happens that artistic genius expresses itself in youth. With the greatest of geniuses there follows an extended period of prodigious activity at the highest level, which seldom sustains its fire throughout a long life. Some, like Franz Schubert, are taken at the height of their youthful genius, in the midst of frenetic activity, and their early death always begs the question, "what might have been." In this episode, we listen to a 2010 performance of one of Schubert's great masterpieces, the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, played by David Finckel, Wu Han and Philip Setzer. That work is preceded by a 2008 SMF performance of Schubert's String Trio in B-flat, D. 471, performed by Benny Kim, Carla Maria Rodrigues and Keith Robinson.
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James Reiss
Posted on December 11, 2010 at 11:50 AM | Permalink
The Mushroom
In Vienna during the 1820s Franz Peter Schubert’s friends nicknamed him “Schwammerl,” mushroom. He was a squat, bespectacled fellow who managed to survive by sponging from his pals and admirers. Of all great composers he was perhaps the poorest, having earned during his lifetime—I long ago read—the equivalent of maybe fifty dollars (this figure may be revised upward to three or four hundred dollars to reflect 2010). According to legend he was so poor that at one point he used wrapping paper from a butcher shop to compose upon. He was so prolific that, as the story goes, while out walking one day in Vienna, he overheard part of a song played by street musicians and asked his friend whose song that was, only to hear his friend say that in fact he, Schubert, had composed it—along with some six hundred other songs.
To top it off—or bottom things out!—he died at thirty-one, leaving no heirs, possibly gay, with most of his music unpublished.
Today he needs no introduction. Listen to his E-flat Major Piano Trio, D. 929, and experience the Master for yourself. I especially want to recommend this Trio’s andante second movement (some twenty-six minutes into the podcast), which has been used in half-a-dozen movies, including Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon.” None of Schubert’s other masterpieces, including his “Unfinished Symphony” and his “Great C-Major Symphony,” matches this single movement. in terms of sheer poignancy and melodic depth; it’s like Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude” on a larger scale. Like me, you may want to say, “Encore, encore!” and replay the second movement time and again.
David Finckel, Wu Han, and Philip Setzer perform Schubert’s incomparable Piano Trio with soulful panache.