Schubert: Piano Trios In E Flat Major, D. 929 And D. 897

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Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)Piano Trio No.2 in E Flat Major, Opus 100 (D. 929) Piano Trio Movement in E Flat Major (Notturno) Opus 48 (D. 897)Of the great composers associated with Vienna in the late eighteenthand early nineteenth centuries, Schubert alone was Viennese by birth. Haydn hadbeen born in Rohrau, a village a few miles from Pressburg, better known asBratislava, the principal city of Slovakia, but had spent his last years ofretirement in the capital, after a career that had passed largely in Eisenstadtand at the great palace of Esterhaz in Hungary. Mozart was a product ofprovincial Salzburg, and had only escaped from there to spend the lastprecarious ten years of his life in Vienna, while Beethoven, a native of Sonn, was 22 before he finally settled there.Franz Schubert's parents, it was true, were not Viennese. His fatherhad left Neudorf, in Moravia, to follow his brother to Vienna to pursue hisvocation as a schoolmaster. His mother had come to the city from Silesia. Thecomposer, however, was born in a schoolhouse in the Himmelpfortgrund in 1797,the fourth surviving child of his parents. As a child he learned the piano andthe violin and had further lessons in theory, before being accepted at the ageof eleven into the Imperial Chapel Choir.Service as a chorister under Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, from whomhe was later to receive instruction in the setting of words, brought with itthe privilege of attending the Staatskonvikt. It was at school that Schubertacquired experience in the orchestral repertoire of the time, while at home thefamily quartet, in which his father played the cello, offered furtheropportunities. At the same time he w rote music of all kinds, the earliestsurviving examples of which come from 1810, his fourteenth year.By the age of 16 Schubert was presented with a choice. He could haveremained at school, with a scholarship, the award being conditional on aconcentration on academic subjects at the expense of music. Only one course waspossible, and Schubert left school to enter, in 1814, for a one-year course oftraining as an elementary school teacher, a career on which he embarked, in hisfather's schoolroom, the following year. During these years Schubert continuedto write music, songs in profusion, chamber music, Masses, symphonies, evenoperas. By 1816 he had given up teaching, at least for the moment, and had goneto live with a friend, Franz von Schober. The following years were to be spentlargely in the company of a changing circle of friends, whose loyalty andadmiration did much to stimulate his genius, providing at the very least adomestic audience for his songs and chamber music.It is ironical that only towards the end of Schubert's life were signsapparent of a wider public recognition. He had not been unknown in Vienna, atleast as a song composer, but he lacked the resources that rich patrons orofficial appointments might have provided. 1828 brought the first publicconcert dedicated to his works, a successful oc