Trios pour piano

Description

If you are looking for subversive, atypical, iconoclastic music, packed with surprises and yet always impeccably elegant and distinguished, these Haydn Trios from his ultimate maturity are for you. Written between 1795 and 1797, they belong to the composer's years of freedom, a man finally detached from his exhausting official duties, at a time when all of Europe was vying for him like a rock star. Subversion and surprise, indeed. Haydn sets fire to conventions, whether harmonic, melodic, or formal, inventing models clearly taken up by Beethoven: the violent climax of the Presto in the C major Trio with its dense orchestral chords, the disturbing enharmonies, the forbidden key changes, the furious minor ninths... And he even invents the walking bass of jazz, in the second movement of the E major Trio; imagine this same bass played pizzicato on the double bass with a slight emphasis on the second and fourth beats, with above it this monodic, wandering, chromatic, and unstable theme entrusted to the saxophone, and there you have the birth of jazz blues. The pianist of the Goya Trio plays a copy of an Anton Walter from 1795, Mozart's favorite piano. The other two companions borrow the playing styles of the late 19th century. Nothing like these fresh and tinkling sounds to resonate with all the genius of this music. © Abeille Musique 2010