Indulis CINTIŅŠ
Dace ZĀLĪTE-ZILBERTE
Mārtiņš ZILBERTS – piano
Programme:
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART – Piano Trio in C major, K. 548
Germaine Tailleferre Piano Trio
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY – Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50 (“In Memory of a Great Artist”)
The LNSO piano trio, which made its debut last season, presents its next programme, inviting listeners on a threefold journey through cornerstone works of the repertoire. To Vienna – with Mozart’s Piano Trio, written at the very height of the composer’s short life. To Paris – with Germaine Tailleferre, the “musical goddaughter” of Erik Satie, that famous minimalist of pear-shaped pieces, who wrote with lightness, elegance and wit. To St Petersburg – with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio, dedicated to the memory of the outstanding pianist and charming bon vivant Nikolai Rubinstein.
Indulis Cintiņš of the LNSO first violins, LNSO cellist Dace Zālīte, nominated for the Grand Music Award 2012 for a brilliant debut, and the experienced accompanist Mārtiņš Zilberts, who works with the LNSO from time to time as a freelance pianist, played a programme of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert at the Great Guild last season. The success was resounding, and now the trio comes forward with a new offering built around Tailleferre’s virtually unknown Piano Trio and two hits of the genre – Mozart’s Trio K. 548 and Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece “In Memory of a Great Artist”.
Between June and October 1788 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his last three symphonies and his last three piano trios. The Trio in C major included in this programme is dated 14 July, which means that its closest relatives are the Symphony in G minor and the so-called “Jupiter”. The themes used in the Trio are very simple, which can hardly be said of the shifting modes and keys of the work, crowned by a charmingly playful finale that lets the musicians romp to their hearts’ content in the sandpit of childhood.
Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) was a French composer whom Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau brought into the famous French “Les Six”, and whose place in music history has sadly remained a rather marginal one, even though Tailleferre wrote beautifully crafted, melodically rich and elegant works, and a considerable number of them at that. She often composed for films and theatre productions; her catalogue contains a great deal of instrumental chamber music, ballets, operas buffa and more. Germaine Tailleferre’s circle of acquaintances, kindred spirits and creative partners included the writers Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry and Eugène Ionesco, the pianists Marguerite Long, Arthur Rubinstein and Alfred Cortot, the conductors Pierre Monteux, Leopold Stokowski, Thomas Beecham, Serge Koussevitzky and Willem Mengelberg, to say nothing of the other members of “Les Six” and also Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Ravel, Chaplin, Picasso, Gershwin, Varèse and many more. Tailleferre’s contribution was recognised with the Legion of Honour, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, the Academy of Fine Arts Grand Prix musical, the Paris Grand Prix musical and others. Trio was composed during the First World War and completed 60 years later.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50 (1882) is dedicated to the distinguished pianist Nikolai Rubinstein (1835–1881), founder and first director of the Moscow Conservatory. In his youth, after graduating from the St Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovsky enjoyed Nikolai Rubinstein’s hospitality, living in his apartment and helping to lay the foundations of the Moscow Conservatory; later, right up to his death, Rubinstein conducted Tchaikovsky’s new orchestral works, and the only misunderstanding between the two kindred spirits concerned Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, originally dedicated to Rubinstein, which the dedicatee, as is well known, criticised without mercy. That incident did not, however, destroy their relationship for good, and Tchaikovsky took Rubinstein’s death in the early spring of 1881 very hard. Almost at once he set about writing a memorial work and chose the piano trio – a genre about which he had previously declared flatly that he would never compose one. The result was one of the most monumental and beautiful examples of Russian chamber music, with a finely polished set of variations in which every facet gleams.
All in all, the concert will appeal to those who cultivate fine, nuanced relationships, to lovers of Caucasian brandy, and to anyone who can still smile like a child at life in its most enchanting forms.