Whiteley Trio

Friday, 4 September at 8pm

The Whiteley Trio was formed in 2007 and ‘promises to be a leading ensemble on the Australian chamber-music landscape’. Members: Sun Yi (violin), formerly Concertmaster Shanghai SO, currently Associate Principal Violinist SSO; Patrick Murphy (’cello), formerly Tankstream Quartet, currently Grainger Quartet; Brenda Jones (piano), top prizewinner 2003 International Piano Competition, semifinalist 2004 Sydney International Piano Competition.

Sun Yi (violin), Patrick Murphy (’cello), Brenda Jones (piano)

Programme

MOZART - Piano trio in G, K 564
MENDELSSOHN - Piano trio in D minor, op 49
BEETHOVEN - Piano trio in B flat, op 97, Erzherzogtrio (Archduke)

About the Artists

The Whiteley Trio is named after the great Australian artist, Brett Whiteley, and is supported by the Whiteley Foundation. Since its establishment in 2007, it has performed a number of concerts around Sydney, at the Bangalow Chamber Music Festival and in Tasmania with clarinettist, Paul Dean.

Violinist Sun Yi is Assistant Concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Soon after completing his studies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he was a major prize-winner in the China Nationwide Violin Competition, he was engaged as the Concert Master of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. As the leader of the Orient String Quartet, he toured Europe and Asia before coming to Australia to study for the degree of Master of Music with Alice Waten and Carl Pini. Sun Yi was the Associate Concertmaster of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra before joining the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Experienced chamber musician Patrick Murphy was the ‘cellist of the former, award-winning, Tankstream Quartet; he frequently plays for the Sydney Symphony; and teaches privately and at the Australian Institute of Music and in in the Rising Stars programme at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He is the ‘cello tutor for the Sydney Youth Orchestra.

Freelance pianist Brenda Jones, who moved to Sydney in 2005, has won international and national piano prizes and toured world-wide. She enjoys a diverse career as chamber musician, soloist and teacher.

All three musicians are foundation members of both the Whiteley Trio and the piano quartet, Nexus – 2MBS Virtuosi

Programme Notes

compiled by Martin Cooper

Mozart - Piano trio in G, K 564

Allegro / Larghetto / Tempo di Menuatto

Around the time of the composition of Mozart’s last three symphonies (summer, 1788), the composer was greatly prolific. Among the works he wrote at this time are three piano trios, K 542, K 548 and K 564. Mozart's great biographer, Hermann Abert, considers that these works are “not of quite the same high level” as the string divertimento, K 563, completed a month earlier, “even though they are all entirely worthy of their creator”. According to Robert Hellyer, it was Otto Jahn, another of Mozart's great biographers, who first suggested that Mozart's last trio started life as a piano sonata, the trio version being hastily assembled perhaps to fulfill some unknown commission. Indeed, in the autograph manuscript only the string parts are in Mozart's handwriting, the keyboard part having been copied out by someone else.

The strings play in parallel motion for much of the time. Either the strings lead and the piano provides accompaniment or the keyboard leads with the strings accompanying. Richard Toop says that this trio is "more notable for charm than depth".

The largely conventional first movement does display some carefully worked out concertante interplay between the violin and the piano. The slow movement is a set of elegant variations on a simple, rather sad, song-like, theme that is played in turn by piano, violin and ‘cello. The concerto-like last movement, marked menuetto, cast in rondo form, develops in interest and invention as the work advances to its conclusion.

Although perhaps not the greatest of compositons, the work is actually one of considerable skill, and contains much beautiful music.

Mendelssohn - Piano trio in D minor, op 49

Molto allegro agitato / Andante con moto tranquillo / Leggiero e vivace / Finale: Allegro assai appassionato

Although, as a youth, Mendelssohn had written his three piano quartets (op 1, 2 and 3) as well as a piano sextet, he was already thirty years old before he started composing for the piano trio combination, which was very popular at that time. Even then, he wrote only two, with a period of six years between their composition. Both are very serious and reflective  - they were composed at about the time of his violin concerto in E minor  - and belong to the last creative period of the composer, who died when only thirty-eight years of age.

The greater part Mendelssohn's trio in D minor, op 49, was written in mid-1839 in Frankfurt-am-Main, and the first performance took place in February 1840 in the grand hall of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, where Mendelssohn was the musical director. He himself played the piano part in the second musical evening of the season.

The opening movement moves forward with vigour and intensity. While the piano part tends to be concerto-like, a good balance among the instruments is maintained. The rather melancholy slow movement is followed by a ‘light and fast’ scherzo.

The rondo-form finale is rather Schubertian texture.

Beethoven - Piano trio in B flat, op 97, Erzherzogtrio (Archduke)

Allegro moderato / Scherzo: Allegro / Andante cantabile, ma perņ con moto / Finale: Allegro moderato - Presto

The Archduke Trio represents one of Beethoven's supreme achievements for piano and strings, and is one of the best examples of his so-called "middle period" style of writing. It was composed in 1811 and de dicated to the Archduke Rudolph, a keen amateur musician. It is often said that is no specific reason why this particular work should bear the title "Archduke", because Beethoven dedicated at least seven works to his one-time pupil and patron - two piano concerti (nos 4 and 5), a violin-piano sonata (op 96) and two piano sonatas (les Adieux and the Hammerklavier). It is, however, the only trio dedicated to Rudolph, so the name Erzherzogtrio is perhaps not inappropriate.

In keeping with the dedication, an air of nobility dominates the work from the broad, expansive, opening theme of the first movement to the beautiful, sustained tune that forms the subject matter for the variations of the slow movement. Even in the playful scherzo, with its energetic rhythms and enchanting tunes, and in the trio section, there is never any lack of dignity. The scherzo itself begins with a string duo, echoed by the piano, and then taken up by all three instruments. Note the cautionary ma perņ con moto which follows the andante cantabile instruction for the last movement indicating, perhaps, that the music should, however, move along. This rondo finale, which follows the slow movement without a break, finds Beethoven in his most sunny mood with a quirky main theme that trips along happily, accompanied by staccato figurations and punctuated by sharp sforzandi. The fourth, and final, appearance of the rondo theme brings a change in both tempo and metre, so that the work ends in a headlong fashion with a high-spirited presto.