The concert series features two prominent figures in the realm of classical music: Chopin, a gifted virtuoso whose singing voice graces the melody, and Ravel, the urbane patriot whose colours mesmerise even the rising sun. Following their acclaimed debut performing duo repertoire, the Vantage Trio—pianist Cindy Ho, violinist Ruda Lee, and cellist Jiyoung Choi—returns to present a landmark programme featuring the only piano trios composed by both Frédéric Chopin and Maurice Ravel.
Like the sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets
From the speech “If music be the food of love” by Duke Orsino that opens Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
Programme:
Piano Trio in G minor, op. 8 (1828–1829)
Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
I Allegro con fuoco
II Scherzo
III Adagio sostenuto
IV Finale: Allegretto
Like the Introduction and Polonaise Brilliante, the Piano Trio was composed when Chopin was interacting with Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, to whom the work is dedicated, but, unlike the Polonaise, it has no explicitly Polish musical flavour and is entirely Germanic in style. Chopin apparently flirted with the notion of employing a viola instead of a violin in the ensemble, though this ambition was not realised, which is a pity as it would have made for an original combination. As the supreme exponent of cantabile, especially of soprano melody, perhaps Chopin’s antipathy to the violin was rooted in, dare one say, jealousy, and an urge not to support the competition!
On listening to the work, three musical features particularly strike the ear: recurrence of the chord of B major in several of the movements, plentiful use of the augmented sixth chord, and rhetorical use of the interrupted cadence. Let these three notions be discussed here in language interesting to the informed yet still accessible to the uninitiated.
First, the B major chord. The sonata evolved in the Enlightenment as a supremely rational concept. It set out a quintessentially balanced musical formula inside which musical discourse could take place. Each component of the template had its role inside the whole, and their familiarity became the springboard for creative endeavour. The classical expression of the blueprint, while including complex patterns outlining the reprise of melody, rhythm, and harmony inside individual movements, did not, however, allow for the notion of musical material common between them. In other words, the same tune is not heard in different movements and, although they function as part of an orderly whole, they are independent in this respect.
As the 19th century progressed, composers became gradually more drawn towards increasing the coherence between movements by deployment of musical material common to more than one. Often, it was a secret process and a musical technique not generally described in the textbooks, and composers themselves tended to avoid revealing it. It is also a sign of sophistication, as it deepens the relationships between disparate musical material. The notion is however prone to misuse, as critical appraisal can tend to perceive too many of these connections. Put simply, scholars often resort to suggesting tunes are related that are fundamentally not.
Even so, the B major chord does crop up regularly in Chopin’s trio and, as it is a sonority unrelated or at best distantly related to the home key G minor, it does, at some level, lend an overarching coherence and secret additional patterning to the work. As an alien sonority, adroit manoeuvring through several chords is required to return from B major to the home key. Here are three instances where, how and even why the chord occurs:
- In the first movement, itself in a strict Beethovenian sonata form, at the junction of the opening exposition section and the central development section, either to link back to the repeat of the exposition or into the development.
- In the scherzo movement, itself in G major, shortly after the first repeated section in the scherzo, and soon after the first repeated section in the trio, this time approached by an augmented sixth chord (see below).
- In the third movement, the slow movement, which is in E-flat major, the second chord at the beginning of the second bar is one of C-flat major, which is the enharmonic equivalent, that is, the same notes but notated differently, of a chord of B major. To E-flat major, a chord of C flat does have a tenuous relationship – it is the chord on the flattened sixth degree. Its presence here knits the first three movements together.
Second, the augmented sixth chord. An extremely chromatic chord but one whose flavour is unexpectedly sweet, the augmented sixth chord is normally situated immediately prior to the chord on the fifth degree that is the first of the two that form the fifth degree (“dominant”) going to first degree (“tonic”) progression of chords that is the “perfect cadence”, classical music’s most emphatic formula for ending a phrase or composition. The augmented sixth chord gets its name from the interval of an augmented sixth (one more semitone than an interval of a major sixth) that defines its core meaning. This augmented sixth interval customarily moves outwards by diverging semitones to an octave that is the fifth degree of the scale and the chord thereon (the “dominant”), after which a perfect cadence normally ensues. Given that the part movement generated, or “voice-leading” is in diverging chromatic steps, it is extremely strong, making the augmented sixth chord a powerful “pre-dominant” chord.
Given its expressive potential, as a composer who is so supremely expressive, Chopin uses the augmented sixth chord surprisingly rarely. More common use is found in Mozart or Dvořák. In Chopin’s trio, conspicuous use is found in the following places:
- In the first movement at the midpoint of the development section alternating with a prolonged chord of C major, and twice at the climax of the recapitulation section.
- In the slow movement, many are found, but one follows in the third bar immediately after the chord of C flat described above. Later, embedded into one of the two contrasting themes, two are used in close succession as part of a sequence by which the same bar is simply repeated but a step higher.
Third, the interrupted cadence, which is a Mozartian device by which a perfect cadence is approached, the music appears to be about to end, when from the chord on the fifth degree (the “dominant”) the music moves not to the chord on the first degree (the “tonic”), which would form a perfect cadence, but unexpectedly to the chord on the sixth degree, thus “interrupting” the musical progress and forming an “interrupted” cadence. In Mozart’s operas it is a frequent occurrence, employed to thwart expectations of a final cadence that is only realised subsequently. Here are two interesting usages in Chopin’s trio:
- Towards the end of the exposition section of the first movement and heightened by a sudden piano dynamic marking.
- In the first subject of the last movement as the cello takes the melody.
These are all creative usages of musical language. As a teenage journeyman, Chopin has learnt his craft well.
Piano Trio (1914)
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
I (Modéré)
II Pantoum
III Passacaille
IV Finale
Ravel dedicated his piano trio to his counterpoint teacher André Gedalge (1856–1926), a serious and modest man who composed “absolute” music (music without reference to non-musical sources) and even penned a treatise on fugue. Ravel is in good company: Gedalge’s pupils span the entire pantheon of French composers of that generation, including Nadia Boulanger, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Jacques Ibert.
The trio was composed by Ravel in a frenzied white heat while staying at the French Basque commune of Saint-Jean-de-Luz just before enlisting to fight in the First World War. His mother was Basque, and an identification with this heritage evinces itself in the first movement, which is based on the rhythm of a zortziko, a Basque dance. In Ravel’s version, the bar of 8/8 is split 3 + 2 + 3. Musicians of classical training tend to expect regular beats and can find such “additive” rhythms difficult. A similar division of the 8/8 bar is the calypso beat 3 + 3 + 2, and, like the calypso, Ravel’s rhythm is gentle and swung.
Beginning in the tonality of A, over a pedal E in the piano, the opening melody is in the violin and cello, two octaves apart, a common Ravel instrumentation, and the intervening span of notes filled in by the piano. The melody itself is “white-note” and in the Dorian mode (equivalent to the white-note scale on D), but the consecutive triads on the piano that follow inside the melodic contour contain a rich array of notes from outside the mode. The second theme is also “white-note”, this time in the Aeolian mode (the white-note scale on A). Given these two themes and their alternation, it is easy to pigeonhole the movement into the sonata form straitjacket, and, always the French classicist, Ravel would not have complained. The “argument” of tonal relationships, albeit reasoned, that is the bedrock of sonata form is, however, absent, and a better perspective might be simply to view the movement as an exercise in pursuing the beauty of sound, never more so than in the translucent harmonics with which it ends.
The second movement, “Pantoum”, functions as a scherzo. A pantoum is a poetic genre derived from the pantun, a Malay verse form. It consists of a series of quatrains, by which the second and fourth lines of a stanza are replicated as the first and third of the next: ABCD, BEDF, EGFH, GIHJ and so on. In order that the pattern does not reproduce infinitely, the final stanza reintroduces the lines “A” and “C” from the first verse as its second and fourth lines, so in this case, IAJC is one possibility. Quite how this translates musically into the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Trio is open to varied interpretations. Perhaps by employing the term “pantoum” Ravel was simply tapping into a latent desire for exoticism in the musical public of the time, and he wanted to create a mystery that was hard to unravel. He never explained the enigma of the title.
A lively movement, it is characterised by plenty of off-beat pizzicato and harmonics. A central section sees the piano play magnificent, slow organum-like chords in 4/2 time, grouped into units of three bars (thus 3 × 8 crotchet beats = 24). Against this the violin and cello have eight bars of 3/4 time (also 8 × 3 crotchet beats = 24).
To bring out the notion of classicism, the third movement, “Passacaille”, is a passacaglia. The passacaglia melody is eight bars long and a sinuous “white-note” contour first heard in the left hand in the depths of the piano’s deepest register. Interpreting which mode the white-note pattern it is in has proved difficult, as the grouping of the notes does not indicate strongly any particular pitch as a likely tonal centre, though F sharp is the most plausible contender. After the initial theme, strict periodicity is maintained, and there are 10 variations, each of the requisite eight bars, just as would be typical of a Baroque passacaglia. In the first variation, the theme is sounded intact, but it is then broken into constituent motifs, and these are the building blocks for subsequent musical material. If it has an underlying harmony, this is not maintained either, and not until the eighth variation for violin and cello alone is it heard in a form close to its original presentation. The movement ends in the deepest piano register, just as it began.
The finale is perhaps a trio version of the textures of Gaspard de la Nuit, with complex arpeggio patterns in all instruments, trills, harmonics, and a continuous thrilling excited glow underpinning the entire colouring. The most common texture is for the violin and cello to work as a melodic unit, accompanied by, and sometimes in opposition to, the piano. When the strings trill, the melody reverts to the piano, sometimes a single line but, at others, all the pianist’s fingers are engaged in giving the melody a lush chordal parallelism. The First World War is still to gather pace and Ravel has not yet experienced trench warfare. The end is exultant. Vive la France!
Programme notes by Ernest Robin