»Große Fuge«

At the prompting of his Russian patroness Nadezhda von Meck, the 18-year-old Claude Debussy wrote his Piano Trio in G major in the summer of 1880 on a journey through Italy. For a long time, most of the autograph material was thought to be lost, and it was only rediscovered in 1982, after more than 100 years, among the effects of Debussy's student Maurice Dumesnil. Although its outer form follows the classic model of Allegro, Scherzo, Andante and Allegro-Finale, the work nonetheless surprises the listener by its melodic freshness and by the phrasing and cadences that are typical of Debussy.

During his life as a composer, Béla Bartók created a substantial number of chamber music works. His trio entitled »Kontraste« (Contrasts) for violin, clarinet and piano, Sz 111, was commissioned for the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman. The latter had asked Bartók for a composition for clarinet, violin and piano, if possible with a slow and a fast movement and no longer in total than the playing time of a normal record of those days, which was 16 minutes maximum. This was the reason behind the composition of »Kontraste«, and the composer himself played the piano part at the work's New York premiere.

The music of Sofia Gubaidulina combines avant-garde and historic musical styles, sometimes supplemented by narrative non-musical sources to create a forceful synthesis. She often makes use of literary texts as non-musical catalysts of this type, as is the case with her composition »Garten von Freuden und Traurigkeiten« (The garden of pleasures and sadnesses) for flute, viola and harp, written in 1980, in which a poem by the contemporary author Francisco Tanzer is recited into the music by the performing musicians. In her trio, Gubaidulina processes the sound worlds of the Far East, in that, following Chinese or Korean tradition, she has the music arise initially from extreme quietness, which then rises to an exciting climax and then falls back again into the initial calm. All three instruments are played using special techniques to bring them closer to their East Asia counterparts – the bamboo flute, Asian string instrument and Far Eastern zither.

Originally, Ludwig van Beethoven had intended his »Grosse Fuge« (Grand Fugue) to be the final movement of his string quartet in B flat major, op. 130. Because of its completely innovative tonal language, however, the composer ultimately decided to give the work its own opus number and to publish it in isolation as the »Grosse Fuge« for string quartet in B flat major, op. 133. In contrast to what the title of the work might initially suggest, the piece is not a pure fugue in the traditional sense; instead, it is a piece with a fugue as the basis but which consists in large part solely of homophonic elements in a freer fugato style. The menacing sounding introductory phrase of the Overtura is initially followed by a gentle section, followed in turn shortly afterwards by an abruptly introduced fugue with many different variations. In the final Allegro, the themes of the fugue, the subsequent Meno mosso e moderato and the introductory Overtura are repeated again, before the work finally comes to a lively and exhilarating ending.

Claude Debussy Piano trio in G major
Béla Bartók "Contrasts" for violin, clarinet and piano, Sz 111
Sofia Gubaidulina "TheGarden of Joy and Sorrow" for flute, viola and harp
Ludwig van Beethoven "Great Fugue" for string quartet in B major, opus 133