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The Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44, by Robert Schumann was composed in 1842 and received its first public performance the following year. Noted for its "extroverted, exuberant" character, Schumann's piano quintet is considered one of his finest compositions and a major work of nineteenth-century chamber music. Composed for piano and string quartet, the work revolutionized the instrumentation and musical character of the piano quintet and established it as a quintessentially Romantic genre.
Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. Sometimes a theme may occur at the beginning and end ; other times a theme occurs in a different guise in every part.
The Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105 of Robert Schumann was written the week of 12– 16 September 1851. Schumann was reported to have expressed displeasure with the work. This was also the year of the premiere of the Rhenish symphony, and among compositions the substantial revision of the Fourth Symphony, the Third Piano Trio, the oratorio Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, a number of piano works and two of his concert overtures, Julius Caesar and Hermann und Dorothea after Goethe.
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Franz Schubert's final chamber work, the String Quintet in C major is sometimes called the "Cello Quintet" because it is scored for a standard string quartet plus an extra cello instead of the extra viola which is more usual in conventional string quintets. It was composed in 1828 and completed just two months before the composer's death. The first public performance of the piece did not occur until 1850, and publication occurred three years later in 1853. Schubert's only full-fledged string quintet, it has been praised as "sublime" or "extraordinary" and as possessing "bottomless pathos," and is generally regarded as Schubert's finest chamber work as well as one of the greatest compositions in all chamber music.
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The Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8, by Johannes Brahms was completed in January 1854, when the composer was only twenty years old, published in November 1854 and premiered on 13 October 1855 in Danzig. It has often been mistakenly claimed that the first performance had taken place in the United States. Brahms produced a revised version of the work in summer 1889 that shows significant alterations so that it may even be regarded as a distinct (fourth) piano trio. This "New Edition", as he called it, was premiered on 10 January 1890 in Budapest and published in February 1891.
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The Piano Quartet in E♭ major, Op. 47, was composed by Robert Schumann in 1842 for piano, violin, viola and cello. Written during a productive period in which he produced several large-scale chamber music works, it has been described as the "creative double" of his Piano Quintet, finished weeks earlier. Though dedicated to the Russian cellist Mathieu Wielhorsky, it was written with Schumann's wife Clara in mind, who would be the pianist at the premiere on 8 December 1844 in Leipzig.
Composed in 1846, the Piano Trio in G minor, opus 17 by Clara Schumann is considered her greatest, most mature four-movement work. It is her only piano trio, composed while she lived in Dresden, following extensive studies in fugue writing and the publication of her Three Preludes and Fugues For Piano, opus 16 in 1845. The trio was premiered by the composer in Vienna on January 15th, 1847.
The Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63, by Robert Schumann was written in 1847. It has four movements:
- Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
- Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
- Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
- Mit Feuer
The Violin Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 121, by Robert Schumann was completed in November 1851, Dedicated to the violinist Ferdinand David, the sonata received its first public performance from Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim on 29 October 1853 in Düsseldorf, in a concert that marked the beginning of a long term musical collaboration.
Gabriel Fauré's Piano Quartet No. 2, in G minor, Op. 45, is one of the two chamber works he wrote for the conventional piano quartet combination of piano, violin, viola and cello. It was first performed in 1887, seven years after his first quartet.
References
- ↑ Keller, James. Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide (Oxford University Press: London 2014), p. 425.
- 1 2 3 Donat, Mischa. Piano Trio No 2 in F major, Op 80 (Schumann) – from CDA30022 – Hyperion Records – CDs, MP3 and Lossless downloads
- ↑ Jensen, Eric Frederick. Schumann (Oxford University Press: London 2012), p. 279.
- ↑ Perry, Beate, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Schumann (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2007), p. 60
- ↑ Daverio, John. Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (Oxford University Press: London 2002), p. 259.
