Joseph Haydn: Piano Trio in A major, Hob. XV:18

Program note written for the San Francisco Symphony.

At 60 years old, Joseph Haydn had not tired of peppering his music with surprises and musical jokes. This A-major piano trio, for instance, starts with three bangs in the form of sudden, loud chords played by all three instruments. He wrote it around 1794 during a period marked by travel to London. Over two concert seasons there (1791–92 and 1793–94), his inventiveness reached new heights and music seemingly poured from his pen: more than a dozen piano trios, his last three piano sonatas, 12 symphonies, and many other works.

Over the course of Haydn’s life, the keyboard’s evolution from harpsichord to fortepiano led to the emergence of the piano trio as a genre. Until the Romantic era, piano trios were generally billed as sonatas for keyboard with violin and cello accompaniment. Early pieces simply doubled the harpsichord’s voices in the strings to enrich the sound. As keyboard instruments developed, new worlds of expression and color opened for composers. Unlike the harpsichord, the fortepiano could sustain notes and create dramatic dynamic contrast, making it an equal expressive partner to the strings. Mozart, for instance, took advantage of the new equality between the instruments in his trios, giving the violin and cello their own melodies.

Haydn, however, chose not to follow this path. The pianist and scholar Charles Rosen writes “Haydn was working against history” in his piano trios, and yet they became “along with the Mozart concertos, the most brilliant piano works before Beethoven.” Perhaps his introduction in London to the powerful new Broadwood fortepianos led to this piano-centric writing. At the time of its first publishing, the marketing of the A-major trio points to the genre’s growing pains. Publishers packaged it with two other trios, in London titling them in the old manner as “Three Sonatas for piano with violin and cello accompaniment,” but trying a new tack in Amsterdam with the title “Three Grand Trios.” Though the instruments’ roles suggest the former title, the grandiosity and creativity of Haydn’s musical ideas make a good case for the latter.

After its declamatory opening, the piano introduces a lilting melody, marked cantabile (singing), an effect that showcases the comparative advantages of the fortepiano over the harpsichord. The violin responds while the cello supports the piano’s bass line. Over the course of the first movement, Haydn takes us again and again through quickly shifting, unexpected harmonies. Just when he has mesmerized us with this harmonic wandering, he stops the piece’s progress all together with a slower tempo marking and a grand pause. This sudden stopping becomes its own motif in a way. Charles Rosen writes, “dramatic silence and the fermata [a hold or pause] play a greater role in [Haydn’s] music than in Mozart’s … the silence is in every case a preparation for something crucial.” Here the silence is perhaps another musical joke, as it is always followed by a straightforward ending statement, as if to say, “nothing unusual to see here!” Following the final occurrence, Haydn wraps up the movement definitively with scales and arpeggios.

The slow movement introduces an entirely new mood as he takes us into melancholy A minor. Dramatic pauses in the middle of phrases add to the questioning quality of the melody and create a dramatic contrast with the warm, easily-moving middle section in A major. The movement does not so much end as segue with a wink into the ebullient third movement (it is marked attacca—literally “attack” but meaning “without pause”). With exuberance and wit, Haydn uses 3/4 meter and chirping gestures in the piano and violin to create a rollicking dance, reminiscent of the folksy Hungarian Romani style he loved to employ. In Rondo form, the theme returns several times interspersed with exploratory episodes. It bounces and buoys us along until the end.