I spent a chunk of my afternoon today looking at the cello part for the Mendelssohn Piano Trio in D minor,\u00a0 a piece I last played in 1997 (yikes!).<\/p>\n
Back in the day, I played in two different piano trios that lasted long enough to feel like groups and not one-offs. Between the two, I worked my way through a good chunk of the repertoire, (although to my bitter disappointment, I\u2019ve never done the Tchaikovsky Trio, which is a piece I love).<\/p>\n
Times have changed in the last ten years- back in those days of yore, it felt like the rich piano trio repertoire was rather poorly represented in the record catalogue. In fact, the only group I really loved was the Stern-Istomin-Rose trio, particulary for Rose\u2019s uniquely tangy vocabulary of articulations. On the other hand, and I know this is sacrilidge, but I was never a fan of the Beaux Arts Trio, who were the one group back then who seemed to have recorded everything.<\/p>\n
But what really struck me back then was that, considering the repertoire- which is the richest chamber repertoire other than the string quartet, there really weren\u2019t many permanent, professional piano trios.<\/p>\n
Then, today, as I was playing the Mendelssohn I remembered our dress rehearsal all those days ago. We had a nearly un-solvable balance problem in the first movement when the violinist and I (neither of us meek players, by any sane measure) couldn\u2019t be heard on the tune over the typically Mendelssohn-ian torrent of running notes in the piano. Finally, although we were all marked ff, our poor pianist (who was not a banger) had to literally tickle the keys as lightly as he could.<\/p>\n
As it happens, this is a sensation known to everyone who has played piano trios (some sonatas have the same problems)- having to bend over backwards to hear two solo string players stationed in front of a 9 foot sound cannon designed for playing Prokofiev piano concertos. Yes, that 9 foot canon is a miraculous tool for repertoire from solo Bach, through the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (although some of his\u00a0una corda\u00a0markings\u00a0don’t work on the\u00a0modern piano), never mind Scriabin,\u00a0Chopin and solo Brahms,\u00a0but it doesn’t always play nicely with others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other hand, imagine how easy the balances in\u00a0that Mendelssohn trio would be on a piano of that period?!?!?\u00a0<\/p>\n
And this got me thinking about why there are so few piano trios compared to string quartets- I think that, for lots of us, the string players get fed up playing so damn loud and the pianists get fed up playing so softly.<\/p>\n
How cool would it be to play in a trio where you could pull a Krystian Zimerman and tour with your own instrument, or even really pull a KZ and have a forte piano for Haydn trios and an early grand for Brahms.<\/p>\n
Actually, just having a small but wonderful Steinway would be great (of course, the longer string length on a concert grand does enable the piano to be tuned more accurately, so there would be a trade off).<\/p>\n
So, if anyone out there would like to donate us a miraculous little trio piano and a truck, we\u2019re ready to get the old band together again\u2026. \u00a0Meanwhile, here’s a little souvenir of trio days past, the Finale from the Brahms\u00a0B Major Trio<\/a>– interestingly, recorded on a 7 foot Yahmaha. <\/p>\n