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Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn: Gould Piano Trio, Coffee Concert, Old Market, Hove 22.2.2009 (RA)

Schumann: Fantasiestück Piano Trio op 88
Brahms: Piano Trio op posth in A
Mendelssohn: Piano trio in Dminor op 49


A gleaming Yamaha awaited the Coffee Concerts regulars in readiness for one the rare events needing a piano. Rather than suspecting union pressure on behalf of a two-handed pianist’s “double” contribution to trio playing - so that they can earn more than “single-line” violin and cello players - the real reason for piano trio scarcity was that Old Market is saving hard for its own Steinway, so I’m told. Meanwhile, the prohibitive costs of hiring a decent piano is the real reason for restricting much of each season to the string quartet repertoire.

The man set eagerly loose on the Yamaha — and with Yorkshire zeal — was Benjamin Frith from Sheffield, who combines with violinist Lucy Gould and cellist Alice Neary to form the Gould trio. They rehearse either in Cardiff, where Lucy Gould is based,  or as this time on the eve of the concert, in London.

And, boy, did the Yorkshire Tyke have work to do.He got away comparatively lightly, even in Schumann’s terms, in the Fantasiestück opus 88, but then came the Brahms-attributed posthumous A major Trio. Ahead for Frith finally,  was the first of  Mendelssohn’s two trios, the one in D minor.

Schumann’s easy-going work contained plenty of interest and stimuli. Its Humoresque was delivered sometimes like an argumentative rustic dance. Its slow Duett set some cavernously deep cello from Neary against some ardent violin from Gould. And its finale came out as both Haydnesque and Hungarisch, in a rousing discourse culminating in the unpredictable conclusion.

The morning’s meat came in with the Brahms, and I feel it really was Brahms, as did Frith, who later disclosed  that he sensed it was the first trio that Brahms ever wrote. We certainly know that Brahms burned any music he did not want hawked among  the 19^th century equivalent of out-takes.

To my ear,  this work sounded like the impassioned young Brahms of his three piano sonatas and from the period of his first close acquaintance with both his champion Schumann, and Schumann’s concert-pianist wife  Clara. However, the rocking second theme of the finale seem more Schumannesque than Brahmsian to me — as it did to  Frith, for that matter. My understanding of this composer’s psychology is that Brahms wanted his extant and surviving  music to be purely his own, with no identifiable traces of other contemporary influences. So the A major had to go:  except that somehow, it appears to have given Brahms’ bonfire the slip  to surface again 27 years after his passing in 1897. And, forgiving Brahms that second theme, and some of the less characteristic ideas he has in the Lento, thank goodness for that.

The Yamaha just about managed the gigantic sonority Brahms wanted, and Frith hoped to extract. And the work, and moreover the interpretation, had large slices of the expansive intellectual and emotional ambition brimming from other excitingly eventful early Brahms works. Stirring pedal points, passionate attack: these especially in the Goulds’ vivace reading, in which Brahms dissolved all the testosterone with a maturely tender violin theme near the end. And kicking off that finale is a theme from the pen, I would wager, belonging to  nobody else.

If the Brahms gave the pianist the largest spotlight, then Mendelssohn plunged Frith virtually into a 'piano concerto', thanks to the demands of the virtuoso Ferdinand Hiller - who hankered to show off  (and probably to show up the more modest string players) at the work’s premiere.

Mendelssohn was conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at the time, so writing his  trio this way must have been stimulating for him. And with the torrent of notes and volume of sound he orders from the piano in the agitated and passionate outer movements, some balancing and competing ‘orchestral breadth’ is needed from both violin and cell0. With Lucy Gould and Alice Neary, it came.

The Scherzo was pure orchestral, fantasy Mendelssohn, the piano with the dancing “woodwind parts.” In the finale, Neary lent a welcome calm to her approach towards the  exuberant and original ending.  With these performances, the anticipation of the promised coming of the Old Market’s own piano increased considerably.

After not one, but two Coffee Concerts in February, the 10^th season ends on March 8th (11am) with the Eroica Quartet in Mendelssohn’s opus 13th and Beethoven’s  late opus 132, both in A minor.

But wait, there's more. A delicious special bonus comes from the principals of the Hanover Band on period instruments with a narrator. On May 17th, they present Haydn In Love: his Piano Trios in G Hoböken XXV (the beloved Gypsy Rondo) and in A Hoböken XVIII — plus two consecutive, early Viennese Mozart Piano Concertos in miniature “unplugged” form. With Gary Cooper at the fortepiano, these will be the masterpiece little A Major, No 12 K414, and No 13 in C K415. They should all sell the place out.

Richard Amey


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