Program Notes: From Mendelssohn to Milhaud

By Esteban Meneses

The prolific composer Darius Milhaud, a key figure of early-20th-century modernism who is perhaps best known today for his ballet La Création du monde, worked in a wide variety of genres and styles. He was a pioneer in adopting elements from jazz into Western classical composition and in exploring polytonality. His music was also influenced by the time he spent in Brazil during World War I.

In the 1930s, Milhaud composed music for almost 30 plays, including Le Voyageur sans bagage (The Traveler Without Baggage) by Jean Anouilh. The jaunty four-movement Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano, Op. 157b, is a jazzy neo-classical adaptation of incidental music from that play. The cheeky Overture is full of syncopations on the piano and exclamatory phrases on the violin, with a sultry clarinet undulating with reckless abandon. The daydreamy Divertissement starts with a duet for violin and clarinet — a lighthearted gab between the two that turns into a warmer, full-throated conversation when the piano joins them, bringing back material from the duet while rounding out the texture. The tempo picks up again for Jeu, an unruly country dance for violin and clarinet alone in which the violin assumes a rustic fiddle style, doubled by a snappy clarinet. 

In the Finale, which occupies the second half of the suite, a brief introduction interjects a morose contrasting character before the playful mood we’ve now come to expect kicks back in — this time as a rollicking tune for clarinet and violin accompanied by piano, with snippets that bring to mind “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” but with a rounder, more self-assured personality. Milhaud also introduces harmonic intricacies — a hint of polytonality and Latin-inflected grooves — that keeps us on our toes until the end, leaving us in resoundingly high spirits with his delightful suite. 

Another captivating trio for the same instruments is by the Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, most famous for his concertos for piano and violin, and for his ballet Gayane. Khachaturian masterfully synthesized Eurasian folk music and Western composition methods, which we hear in his Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano, in three movements. It was composed in 1932, long before the music that made him famous, when he was still a student at the Moscow Conservatory. 

Marked Andante con dolore, molto espressivo, the mesmerizing first movement starts with slow chords on the piano that suggest an exotic tonality; a hushed clarinet takes the main melody, with accompaniment from the violin, which also presents ideas of its own. Sudden rushes in the tempo propel music that is split into mini episodes, including the violin now taking the main melody from the clarinet. Couched in chromatic and modal harmonies, the material is repeated with added ornamentation, and with thrilling gypsy fiddling and soulful clarinet lines. 

The Allegretto starts with a pizzicato violin outlining a descending motif for piano and clarinet — a motif that introduces an exquisite, meditative folk melody played on the clarinet’s high register, but with slackening tempo. The pace picks up again to where it started, as the violin takes the folk theme and develops it in conjunction with the opening descending motif. 

The long Moderato finale uses an Uzbek folk melody as the basis for a theme-and-variations set that starts with a yearning solo clarinet and colorful piano chords. When the violin joins in, the tempo quickens and continues to shift throughout the variations, giving the folk melody different shades of meaning. In the last third of the movement, a forte piano with a thumping rhythm introduces a quick succession of lines for the other two instruments that are repeated and transformed, with continuous variations in tempo and texture. 

Felix Mendelssohn’s lyrical and fervent Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66, a 19th-century chamber music gem, is a trio of a different kind — a standard trio for piano, violin and cello. Featuring contrasting moods and emotions that are organized into recognizable structures and sensible developmental processes, the rapturous trio is one of Mendelssohn’s finest works. The piece was composed relatively quickly in Frankfurt in early 1845, about six years after Mendelssohn’s ​First Piano Trio. It was dedicated to his close friend and fellow composer, Louis Spohr. Although both piano trios have the same fast-slow-scherzo-fast four-movement structure, the second is more technically accomplished and demanding, calling for a virtuosic piano part. It also takes on a darker mood, with roiling textures, and features an astounding finale that employs a Lutheran chorale.   

Cast in sonata form, the first movement, marked Allegro energico e con fuoco, opens with saturnine arpeggiated figures on the piano that the violin and cello soon pick up. The main theme emerges from that tumultuous mood. A distinctive feature of the trio is the way in which Mendelssohn introduces the second theme in major key — also in the finale — from climactic sections in the exposition. The movement develops with great swells, peaks and virtuosic piano runs, followed by wistful echoes on the cello and an ever-present back-and-forth between violin and cello. 

The serene second movement, in E-flat major, is derived from Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte (“Songs Without Words”), Op. 19, No. 6, “Venetian Gondola Song.” The composer dreams up a hushed berceuse that gently rocks and cradles you along a sleepy, moonlit Venetian boat ride as melodies flow almost endlessly from the ethereal textures. 

After that dreamy Andante espressivo, the piano injects a rush of excitement for the short Scherzo: Molto allegro quasi presto, structured as a rondo in which the restless main theme is bounced back and forth between the three instruments. The frolicsome interplay comes to a sudden end, sealed by jaunty pizzicatos. 

And we finally come to the gorgeous Finale, appropriately marked allegro appassionato, which progresses from C-minor to balmy C-major. A rising cello motif (from G to A-flat) forms the main theme of the movement, which returns throughout, ricocheting between each instrument and taking on different distinguishing features. The heart of the finale comes from Mendelsohn’s musing on a melody from a 16th-century psalter, which in his trio is first sung quietly by the piano, with shades from the opening theme lingering on the strings. Toward the end, the chorale returns in a more assertive mood, this time with echoes of the main theme played by the piano, followed by insistent variations on the main theme until the end, after the modulation to major mode. It is a glorious climax to a stunning piece of music, in which the themes are entwined and developed with passion and technical adroitness, the composer meditating on the ancient chorale as he swiftly melds it into the tempestuous fabric of his music.