All sorts of echoes

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

3 February

To-night, I listened - live - to three pieces for (or incorporating) a piano trio (The Sitkovestsky Trio), the first (Haydn’s Klavertrio No. 43 in C major, Hob. XV/27) and last (Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor, M. 7) of which reminded me of other things.

Regarding one, I have a hypothesis to make, whereas the other gives rise to an observation:


In a motif in the opening movement of the Haydn (marked Allegro), and in a certain quality in the string writing, I could hear Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major*, Op. 44, and I should be surprised not only if this work of the former were not known to the latter, but also, if so, to learn that the reminiscence is not a deliberate one.

For this, I must search for some evidence.


Regarding the Franck, this was not a work that I knew – because, as far as I recall, I have only heard the familiar works: the Symphony in D minor and the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major** – and yet I heard themes, especially in the outer movements (marked Molto moderato and Allegro non troppo), that seemed to emanate from those of the symphony, and the power of the tutti was such as to remind one of orchestral forces.

But which came first...?



End-notes

* In full (according to the work quoted below), the Quintet for Pianoforte and Strings.

** At any rate, it appears that the Schumann was influential on Franck in writing his quintet, but that needs further looking into:

Talking of the finale of Schumann's piano quintet***, J. A. Fuller-Maitland writes (in Schumann's Concerted Chamber Music (Oxford University Press, London, 1929) 'we are irresistibly reminded of a chime of bells, an effect that must have been in César Franck's mind when he wrote the ending of his violin sonata.


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