Presentation: Andante Un Poco Mosso of Schubert’s Piano Trio in B-Flat Major

Tzu-Wei Huang

Dr. O’Donohue

MH2400.10

03/30/2016

Presentation: Andante un poco mosso of Schubert’s Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op.99-D.898

        This large-scale piano trio is composed in 1827, a year before Schubert’s death. Unlike the tragic song cycle, Winterreise, which he was working on simultaneously, the B-flat piano trio is a buoyant, optimistic piece with abounding lyrical ideas throughout. The key, B-flat Major, gives the audience a particularly gentle, warm tone in Schubert’s music, including his last piano sonata, D.960 and the third of 4 Impromptus, D935. The Andante un poco mosso movement is believed to replace an Adagio movement Schubert wrote when he was sketching the piano trio, this Adagio movement is named later as “Notturno” D897 as an independent piece. Because of the slightly faster walking tempo with its beautiful main melody introduced by the cello, the Andante un poco mosso fits better after the pastoral, melodious first movement. “In a word, the Trio in E-flat major is more spirited, masculine, and dramatic; this one (the B-flat major Trio) is more passive, lyric, and feminine.” commented by Robert Schumann in his New Journal of Music. I personally agree with Schumann’s opinion toward the two grand piano trios, the smooth lyricism and pastoral image created in D.898 is certainly a contrasting work compared to the E-flat piano trio.

        Similar to some other second movements in late sonatas, the Andante un poco mosso is in the subdominant of the original key, which is E-flat major in relation to B-flat major. With the lilting nature of 6/8 meter and the gentle Andante tempo, the piano brings out the steadily moving eighth notes accompaniment, creating smooth tonal background for the whole A section of its ternary structure. Then, the cello sings the beautiful, lullaby-like melody before the violin join in, which later on develops into the lovely duet between the two of them. We can notice that there are plenty of accents marked in the parts, and they often carry different meanings and function that the performers should examine carefully in order to present the beauty of Schubert’s intention and his musical language. As a cellist, I will focus on my interpretation with regard to phrasings and notation markings in the cello part. In the beginning, the first four dotted-quarter notes are all notated with accents. In my opinion, it actually resembles a gentle swinging motion rather than the punctuating action we often produce when seeing an accented note. Whereas, the accents on G-flat at measure 19 and 20 in cello and piano parts have different purposes from those happened before. I claim that it is a delicate harmony emphasis on the weak-beat dissonances that attract our attention from the main melody, which the violin bears with strong-beat accents playing up the swinging motion. Moreover, passages with subito piano and pianissimo coming after a crescendo is often seen in this movement, mostly because of the unexpected harmonic changes, including the bitter-sweet mode mixture, modulations, and enharmonic progression. These drastic dynamics changes echo with the distinctive tonal colors of key areas, and enhance the sense of traveling to distant space, which the audience often feel strongly during Schubert’s music.

        In the contrary B section, the anxious syncopation in strings part creates a restless instability and tension that respond to the uneasy nature of the relative C minor. For the first time, the piano alone takes the melodic lead with an angular contour and expressive thirty-second notes. While the A section has subito piano that displays various tonal colors, the B section uses subito forte for the tremendous intensity of rhythmic and harmonic interruption, especially in the transition part between the C minor piano passage and the parallel C major strings duet. Interestingly, the major mode syncopation in the piano becomes a lively background that supports the conversation and finally the delightful tutti of strings. Furthermore, the accents in B section serve as another rhythmic function—-the stress for syncopation.