Bernstein: Piano Trio

I went to the library on Sunday. It was liberating. I picked up things at random, Biber and Adams and Gregorian chant. I was like a child in a frikkin' candy shop. I haven't felt that way in some time, just blindly grabbing at music. I think I obtained 8 or 9 cds. I'm slowly working my way through them. But I'm not aiming for quantity. Without any time limits, restrictions, quotas of listening to attain, I want to take my time with the music.

One of the cds I picked up was the Ahn Trio. They are a group of three Julliard-trained sisters with a passion for twentieth century music. Many of the pieces on the cd were commissioned for the trio. Trio music is not quite as heralded as the string quartet. The string quartet is the gold standard of chamber music, almost the litmus test of contrapuntal writing. Earlier composers saw the string quartet as a necessary hurdle, a genre to master before attempting a symphony. I can see that. If you told me to write a symphony now, I would choke. I think you have to learn how to create dialogue work up to it. However, for some reason, the interaction between four strings has been more compelling for many composers. My theory is that this is possibly due to temperament issues; you add a piano in and the strings can't even come close to just tuning.

Digression: Pianos are out of tune. Basically, in acoustical physics there's these Pythagorean relationships between intervals. If you've ever seen Donald in Mathmagic Land you'll know about this. The best example is the string. He plucks it then shows if you divide it exactly in half and press it down and pluck it again, it's the same note an octave higher. So all the other intervals between notes have these various proportions. HOWEVER, when you get to actually putting those on an instrument, there's an issue. If you tune all the fifths perfectly, by the time you get to the octave, it's out of tune. There's a small discrepancy. So all these tuning systems were invented to "temper" the intervals. Basically, you decide that it's ok to have one thing sound a little out of tune to preserve the other intervals. So there's all these systems.

The main one used today is called equal temperament, where you divide that octave discrepancy between all twelve notes of the octave equally. Thus, everything is out of tune. But we're used to hearing it that way, so it doesn't sound out of tune. But on a violin, you tune to perfect fifths, and generally, you are taught to hear chordal intervals as accurately as possible. So a violinist or cellist or violist has the ability to put their fingers anywhere, thus we can actually sort of avoid the whole temperament issue (assuming we have the training to really hear notes "in tune"). The problem is, you add a piano and you might be "out of tune" with it. This might be one reason why it was more popular for composers to write all-string groups. But I'm not an expert on temperament. This is just what I was able to pick up through four years at a college where they are into early music and like to utilize alternate temperaments. End of digression.

The first thing I listened to on the album was Leonard Bernstein's Piano Trio. It has a lovely questioning quality in the opening. Bernstein is one of the most fascinating men of the twentieth century. I always think of the quote from Breakfast at Tiffany's where she's trying to decide on her absolute idea man and she says "like Albert Schweitzer or Leonard Bernstein." Pretty sweet shout out. Seriously though, he was such a brilliant man. I've seen old recordings of him giving concert lectures and he just has this amazing way of speaking about music.

Bernstein wrote this piece (according to the cd liner notes) in 1937 as a third year student at Harvard. He was nineteen. The second movement in particular shows a synthesis with jazz writing. It's very smoothly integrated; at such a young age, this jazzy second movement is completely sophisticated, seamless. The liner notes had a comment from the producer of the album: "I somehow imagine the mature Bernstein might not have been too unhappy looking back on this colorful music of his youth."

The movement that really captured my heart was the third. The piece feels like three distinct movements in itself; Largo, Allegro Vivo E Molto Ritmico. Each section has its own character. The first has a sort of open-ended, questioning quality that echoes the tone of the first movement. It has this ebb and flow, swell and recession. Then the first idea dies away to one of my favorite themes I've heard ages. The allegro vivo has this incessant energy that keeps building on itself and becoming more urgent. The second theme is something that will stay with me and keep me listening to the piece in the future.

It has a rhythm and lyricism that I think are defining characteristics of Bernstein. Even in West Side Story, there's so much rhythmic complexity with these fantastic melodies. It's an incredibly hard show to pull off.

I hope I can listen to more Trios...I've never had the opportunity to play one, unless you count Corelli Concero Grosso type things. Which I don't, since it's just three soloists with orchestra. Therefore, the trio repertoire is a total gap in my knowledge.

The Ahn Trio's most recent album is called Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac. I think it may be the next thing I buy on iTunes. The clips I found on youtube were lovely. Their version of My Funny Valentine is exactly how the piece should sound. They don't up the saccharine factor on it, but let the melancholy tinge in the melody come through with a latin-influenced setting. The only video of their version that I found was a live performance, so the sound quality is cloudy, but I think it is a great performance.

The other video worth a listen is the dreamy, expansive Dies Irae. The video is the album version (I love when I can find those online). I think it has a yearning quality that would be right at home in a film score. Listen and see for yourself. These were true gems and I'm glad to have stumbled upon these pieces. This album is definitely on my must-get list!