Hamden Trio's Beethoven, Brahms Constitute Excellent Music-Making

Rarely does one have the privilege of hearing the two greatest works for one medium on the same concert program. But the chance presented itself Monday evening, when the Summer School offered a concert by the Hamden Trio before a large Sanders Theatre audience.

The medium: the trio for piano, violin, and 'cello (played, respectively, on this occasion by Bruce Simonds. Robert Brink, and Karl Zeise). The two works: Beethoven's Trio in B-Flat Major ("Archduke"), Op. 97, and Brahms' Trio in B Major, Op. 8--though Brahms' two later contributions to the medium press them hard.

No matter how many times one has heard or played the Beethoven, the work never ceases to amaze one with its riches. Masterful in structure, significant in material, it is full of an almost endless succession of felicitous surprises--original shifts of harmony, changes in melodic contour, dynamics, and texture--which somehow always manage to retain their initial freshness.

The first movement is a paragon of spaciousness and dignity, recalling the mood of the opening of his F-major "Razoumovsky" Quartet. From the solo piano sentence with which the work begins, it was apparent that Mr. Simonds had lost none of his old mastery. This opening culminates is a series of six staccato chords, which in most performances come crashing forth like so many sledgehammer blows. Under Simonds' hands these chords came out firm but restrained, and sent me scurrying home later to see how the composer had marked them. Sure enough, the chords are designated forte, not fortissimo; and Simonds was being careful not to ruin the string parts, which are marked "cantabile."

This was typical of his care and taste throughout the work. Never once did he say to his confreres, "See what a big noise I can make. Let's see you try to match it." He never strayed from a perfect sense of balance and ensemble. And this had the fortunate result that the violin and 'cello were never compelled to force their tone to the point of raspiness, which so often happens with an overpowering pianist. These three artists demonstrated clearly that chamber music is a collaborative rather than a competitive art.

Mr. Zeise drew from his 'cello a tone that was beautiful indeed and unusually even throughout the whole range. Mr. Brink proved himself to be an obviously fine musician, but not quite in the same class with his two companions; he had occasional insecurity of intonation.

Simonds was always in full command of his piano, and never over-pedaled. He produced as feathery and pearl-like scales, and as delicate trills as one could desire. (That marvelous soft, ghostly passage in the middle of the first movement, for pizzicato strings and trilling piano, came off especially well.)

The high point was perhaps the solo piano presentation of the slow movement theme. The melody is the simplest series of conjunct scale fragments, but so tellingly contoured that in the hands of a great artist it emerges as one of the most ineffably seraphic passages in all music. It points up the fact that the profoundest statements may be uttered by the simplest means. Complexity is not the sure road to great art.

The Brahms Trio bears certain resemblances to the Beethoven work. It opens with a soft piano solo. The working out of the Scherzo is similar. The theme of the slow movement is again presented by the solo piano in alternation with the strings; and it is another example of a soft, divine profundity unfolded through simple conjunct motion.

Brahms thought highly enough of this early trio to rework it into a new version toward the end of his life. It shows a mastery of form and material worthy of Beethoven. But it is by no means an imitative or "student" work. Brahms was a mature and consummate composer right from his Opus 1 on.

There is plenty that is pure Brahms in this work, such as the perfect balance between the Romantic material and its Classical treatment; the special textures and spacings in the scoring; and the frequent rhythmical and metrical subtleties. And idea after idea is characterized by what the Germans call "Schwung," a term that unfortunately has no reasonable equivalent in English.

This work has another noteworthy feature: although the piece is in the major mode, the finale is in the minor. Of course there are countless examples of a work in the minor whose finale is in the major; but instances of the reverse are extremely few (Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony is another example).

The three performers again played with great skill. Simonds' playing here was more robust than in the Beethoven, but still he was careful not to overwhelm the strings. All three took special pains to achieve subtle phrasing. And one noted here, as in the Beethoven, how nuanced the dynamics were in such matters as appoggiaturas and their resolution.

The concert opened with a work by the late Baroque Belgian composer Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, the Trio in B Minor, No. 2, a pleasing four-movement composition of the sonata da chiesa type.

But it was the supreme quality of the Beethoven and Brahms works, and the superb artistry with which they were performed that affected one so deeply. A final tribute is that, inordinately difficult as both works are, these artists played with such apparent effortlessness that one left with the glowing feeling of being able to do it oneself. This was one of those events that make one want to say, even in 1959, "What a wonderful world this is that we live in!"