Classical Music | Cello Music

Franz Schubert

Notturno Play Play

Cello

Recorded on 10/01/1993, uploaded on 10/01/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Except for a lone movement in B-flat major composed in 1812, Franz Schubert composed no works for piano trio until 1827, the year before his death. Within that one year he composed the two piano trios, D. 898 and D. 929, and the solitary Nocturne published as his opus 148.

Prefaced with two measures of pianissimo chords in the piano, a quiet melody begins in the two string instruments, first hovering around the pitch G, then B-flat and, finally, D before gliding effortlessly back to the opening tone. The melody is then repeated in the piano with a delicate pizzicato accompaniment in the strings. A transitional passage follows, colored with the flattened submediant from the tonic minor. This mode mixture prepares the arrival of an episodic section in E major. Though dramatically contrasting in its stately character, this episode nevertheless seems to grow out of the sublime principal theme. No doubt this is due to their shared rhythmic motif—the turn-like figure of the principal melody being transformed into the dotted rhythm of the episode. Though beginning in the key of E major, the episode comes to a close in F major. The tonic key of E-flat returns prematurely, though not without chromatic coloring, in another transitional passage leading back to the principal theme. The theme is once again heard first in the strings, followed by the piano, though, in both cases the accompaniment is far livelier. The episode returns, this time in the key of C major. Following the return of the episode, the principal theme is stated one final time in the tonic key embellished with trills in the piano. Instead of the piano taking its turn at presenting the melody, a brief coda, in which the earlier E major tonality is briefly revisited, closes the Nocturne. Joseph DuBose