Piano Trio in C Major
GASPAR CASSADÓ
Born September 30, 1897, Barcelona
Died December 24, 1966, Madrid

Of Catalonian heritage, cellist Gaspar Cassadó began his studies in Barcelona but went to Paris at age 13 to study with Pablo Casals. He launched an international career shortly after World War I, making his American debut in 1936 and returning for a second visit in 1949. As a cellist, he was renowned for the richness of his sound and made famous recordings of the concertos of Schumann, Haydn, Boccherini, and Vivaldi; late in life, he made several chamber music recordings with Yehudi Menuhin.

Cassadó was known in this country as a composer long before he appeared here as a performer: in 1928, Willem Mengelberg had led the New York Philharmonic in the world première of Cassadó’s Catalonian Rhapsody. As might be expected, Cassadó wrote primarily for cello, and his compositions include a cello concerto and arrangements for cello of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3 and Weber’s Clarinet Concerto.

A frequent performer of chamber music, Cassadó also wrote a great deal for chamber ensembles, including two cello sonatas. If there was a Catalonian side to Cassadó, there was also a classical element in his make-up, and this is on display in the Trio in C Major. It is in three movements in the expected fast-slow-fast sequence, though Cassadó challenges expectations at a number of points. After a dramatic first movement, the second is set at a heavy pace rather than being lyric, and the finale opens with a powerful recitative before this impassioned movement takes wing at the Allegro vivo.

Adagio in G Minor (arr. Eroica Trio)
TOMASO ALBINONI
Born June 14, 1671, Venice
Died January 17, 1751, Venice

The Adagio in G Minor is the most famous music Albinoni never wrote. This vastly popular music is a reconstruction (actually, an entirely new composition) by the Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto, based on a six-bar fragment found in one of Albinoni’s manuscripts. Giazotto’s arrangement, published in 1958, helped contribute to the booming interest in baroque music in the years after World War II, and it has become one of the most popular of classical pieces–the current catalog lists over 35 different recordings.

Albinoni himself was a contemporary of Bach, who admired his music (and who paid Albinoni the subtle compliment of borrowing some of his themes to use as fugue subjects). The son of a wealthy family, Albinoni never had to take a court or church position to support himself as a musician, but he was far from being a dilettante, as he is sometimes characterized: he wrote over fifty operas, forty cantatas, and a vast amount of instrumental music that was widely published, and his name was–at the time of his death–known throughout Europe.

There is no secret to the success of the Adagio. Giazotto arranged Albinoni’s solemn, somber melody for string orchestra and organ, developing and driving the original theme to a stirring climax. The Adagio is a curious musical mixture, one that in some ways combines the best of both worlds: it offers both the stateliness of baroque music and the expressive sweep of romantic music. Albinoni might never recognize the Adagio in G Minor as his own, but he would certainly be pleased by its success–and even more pleased that it has led countless listeners to discover the wonders of baroque music for themselves.

The Adagio in G Minor is heard at this concert in an arrangement for piano trio made by the members of the Eroica Trio.

Porgy and Bess Fantasy (arr. Kenji Bunch)
GEORGE GERSHWIN
Born September 28, 1898, Brooklyn
Died July 11, 1937, Beverly Hills

Given the place of Porgy and Bess in American history and art, it comes as a surprise to learn that it was a comparative failure at the time of its première in New York in 1935. It did run for 124 performances, but when the production closed it was $70,000 in debt, and reportedly Gershwin’s royalties were not even enough to cover the cost of having the parts copied. Gershwin was stung by the failure of his “folk opera” to find the success he had hoped for–he is said to have remarked: “I think the music is so marvelous. I really can’t believe I wrote it.” When Gershwin died in 1937 at age 38, Porgy and Bess had pretty much dropped out of sight.

The rescue of Porgy and Bess–and its gradual ascent to the honored place in American music it enjoys today–began immediately after Gershwin’s death. A revival in 1941 that cut the production down to Gershwin’s songs and spoken dialogue was a success, and it reminded audiences just how good Gershwin’s music was. A production in the early 1950s that starred the young Leontyne Price and William Warfield was a triumph, both in this country and on its European tour (that cast has left a spectacular recording). And in 1976 the Houston Grand Opera produced Porgy and Bess in Gershwin’s original, complete version (it had been cut down for its 1935 première). Now, with an unknown half-hour of music restored, Gershwin’s conception can be experienced in the grandeur and sweep he originally envisioned–in this version Porgy and Bess is more nearly an American “folk opera” than a musical show.

But in whatever form it takes, in whatever version it is heard, the music of Porgy and Bess is irresistible. Any work that includes Summertime, I got plenty o’ nuttin’, It ain’t necessarily so, There’s a boat dat’s leavin’, Lawd, I’m on my way, and so many other classics will captivate and move audiences wherever and whenever they are heard.

The Porgy and Bess Fantasy heard at this concert is an arrangement of music from Porgy and Bess prepared by the members of the Eroica Trio.

Piano Trio in E Minor, Opus 90 “Dumky”
ANTONIN DVORÁK
Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague

Dumky is the plural form of the Russian dumka, a type of Slavonic ballad–perhaps of Ukrainian origin–characterized by a dark and elegiac character. In his “Dumky” Trio, Dvorˇák makes an important change in this form: to the melancholy music of the traditional dumka, he adds fast and jubilant music, so that each of his movements consists of sharply-contrasted parts. Dvorˇák began work on the “Dumky” Trio in November 1890 and completed it on February 12, 1891. When he played the piano part at the first performance in April 1891, Dvorˇák was a few months short of his fiftieth birthday and at the height of his powers. During the previous year, he had conducted the première of his Eighth Symphony, and in June 1891 would come double honors: he received an honorary degree from Cambridge and was invited to become director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvorˇák played the piano in a series of farewell concerts featuring the “Dumky” Trio before departing in the fall of 1892 for his new position in the New World.

The last of Dvorˇák’s four piano trios, the “Dumky” has an unusual form, consisting of six dumka movements, each with slow and fast sections. The first three are played without pause, the fourth dumka is primarily a slow movement, the fifth primarily a fast one, and the sixth shows some elements of the rondo-finale, and so Dvorˇák’s highly unusual structure may be said–if one needs or wants to understand it that way–to conform to the four-movement shape of the standard piano trio. Far better, though, to take this highly original music, which annihilates sonata form, on its own terms.

The “Dumky” Trio is powerfully expressive music, ranging in emotional extremes from fragmentary, grieving slow phrases that often sound right out of Janárˇek to fast sections much like Dvorˇák’s own buoyant Slavonic Dances. The odd combination of dark music side-by-side with bright is curiously satisfying, the elegiac and festive sides of Dvorˇák’s soul flashing out by turns in this intense music. The Lento maestoso opens with falling piano triplets that soon give way to ascetically lean and beautiful string lines; at the Allegro vivace, quasi doppio movimento the music leaps brightly forward, and these two sections alternate before leading directly into the second dumka: Poco Adagio. Here the somber and steady opening pulse gradually leads to a dancing Vivace non troppo, where the violin flies quietly but brilliantly over staccato piano accompaniment; along the way Dvorˇák offers a brief cello cadenza. The third–Andante–is built on the piano’s chaste opening melody, played at first only by the right hand; the fast section–as in the second dumka–belongs to the violin. The fourth dumka–Andante moderato–has the feel of a slow movement because the fast sections are brief and restrained, almost a part of the fabric of the overall slow tempo. In a similar way, the fifth–Allegro–functions as the work’s fast movement because it opens at a fast tempo and, despite some slow interludes, remains largely at this pace. The opening of the Lento maestoso is dark, grieving, painful, as are the Lento interludes. Dvorˇák binds them together with vigorous dance sections, and one of these finally brings this unique and powerful music to its close.