Schubert's Two Great Piano Trios
Written in the last full year of a short life, Schubert's two piano trios join lyric song to symphonic scale — and one of them contains a melody the whole world knows.
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) composed his two mature piano trios in 1827, within months of each other and barely a year before his death at thirty-one. They are among the supreme achievements of the genre, and they could have been written by no one else: only Schubert combined this gift for endless, singing melody with a willingness to let a movement unfold at its own unhurried pace — the quality Schumann admiringly called "heavenly length."
The B-flat major, D. 898 (Op. 99)
The first of the pair is the sunnier. Its opening bursts with confident energy; its slow movement is a serene cello song of great tenderness; its scherzo dances; and its finale rolls out one genial tune after another. Schumann heard in it "grace, novelty and poetry," and called it the more "feminine and lyrical" of the two — a work that leaves the room brighter than it found it. This is the trio whose opening movement circulated widely under its old opus number, Op. 99.
The E-flat major, D. 929 (Op. 100)
The second trio is the darker and more monumental. Its glory is the slow movement, an Andante con moto whose grave, trudging cello melody — said to derive from a Swedish song — became one of the most famous passages Schubert ever wrote. Modern audiences may recognise it from its haunting use throughout Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon, which lifted the melody into wider fame. Schubert thought highly enough of the theme to bring it back in the vast finale, binding the whole work together across nearly fifty minutes of music. A concise account of Schubert's life is given by the Encyclopædia Britannica, and the scores themselves are freely available through public-domain libraries.
Length as meaning
Schubert's trios ask something of a listener: patience, and a willingness to be carried. Their length is not padding but the point — the music takes its time because the feeling it explores cannot be rushed. In this they look forward to the expansive Romantic works to come, even as they grow directly out of the example of Beethoven, whom Schubert revered and whose funeral he attended as a torchbearer the year these trios were written.
The Notturno and the single movements
Around the two great trios sit smaller treasures. The Notturno in E-flat, D. 897, is a serene single movement — possibly a discarded slow movement for the B-flat trio — of hushed, hymn-like beauty. Earlier still, the teenage Schubert left a bright single-movement Sonatensatz (D. 28). These pieces make ideal shorter encounters with his chamber style before a listener commits to the vast spans of D. 898 and D. 929, and they show that even Schubert's offcuts were the envy of lesser composers.
Where to go next
From Schubert the story opens into the full Romantic piano trio — Schumann, Brahms and the national schools. For advice on hearing the D. 929 slow movement for the first time, see the listening guide; for performances on record, the discography.