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La morte di Dussek

Sonatas and Trios

Philip Antony Corri composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composer
Ferdinand Ries composer

Frahm-Lewis Trio
Nathan Buckner piano
Ting-Lan Chen violin
Noah Turner Rogoff cello

Release Date: May 3, 2024
Catalog #: NV6631
Format: Digital
Classical
Chamber
Cello
Piano
Violin

The acclaimed The Frahm-Lewis Trio entices with LA MORTE DI DUSSEK. Contrasting the works of Mozart with the lesser-known Ferdinand Ries and Philip Antony Corri, it is a veritable declaration of love to the Classical era. One would be forgiven to think that the only star of this album would be Mozart, with his befittingly performed sonatas. Or perhaps its Beethoven’s student, Ferdinand Ries? After all, he graces this collection with an imposing trio highly reminiscent of his teacher’s early chamber works. A veritable trifecta is achieved with the addition of the album’s title piece by Philip Antony Corri, whose legacy intertwines with his sister’s marriage to the once famous composer Jan Ladislav Dussek. A historical oversight, for this premiere recording of his trio, translated as “The Death of Dussek,” is a clear focal point of this album — lyrical, beautiful, melodically elaborate, and harmonically innovative, almost as much as the works by the composer it commemorates.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 La morte di Dussek Elegiac Sonata in F minor: I. Allegro agitato e con espressione Philip Antony Corri Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 7:20
02 La morte di Dussek Elegiac Sonata in F minor: II. Andante moderato Philip Antony Corri Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 5:46
03 La morte di Dussek Elegiac Sonata in F minor: III. Finale: Non troppo presto ma agitato Philip Antony Corri Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 5:26
04 Sonata in A Major, Opus 3/3, K.12: I. Andante Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 3:13
05 Sonata in A Major, Opus 3/3, K.12: II. Allegro Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 2:24
06 Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 1/2, K.302: I. Allegro Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 5:58
07 Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 1/2, K.302: II. Rondeau: Andante grazioso Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 6:54
08 Trio in B-flat Major, Opus 28: I. Allegro Ferdinand Ries Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 9:22
09 Trio in B-flat Major, Opus 28: II. Scherzo: Allegro vivace Ferdinand Ries Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 5:04
10 Trio in B-flat Major, Opus 28: III. Adagio Ferdinand Ries Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 3:44
11 Trio in B-flat Major, Opus 28: IV. Finale: Allegretto ma non troppo Ferdinand Ries Frahm-Lewis Trio | Nathan Buckner, piano; Ting-Lan Chen, violin; Noah Turner Rogoff, cello 6:58

Piano: Steinway & Sons, New York
Violin: Giuseppe Tarasconi, 1887
Cello: Wendy & Peter Moes, 2018

Publisher (Corri) Chappell & Co, London, 1816
Publisher (Mozart: K.12) Breitkopf & Hartel, Leipzig, 1879
Publisher (Mozart: K.302) Breitkopf & Hartel, Leipzig, 1879; Frahm-Lewis Trio, 2021
Publisher (Ries) N. Simrock, Bonn, ca.1810

Funding Source Frahm-Lewis Trio Fund

Tracks 1-3 & 6-7 Violoncello ad libitum by Frahm-Lewis Trio

Recorded July 21-22, 2022 at Studio M, Minnesota Public Radio in Saint Paul MN
Recording Session Engineer Cameron Wiley
Digital Editing Michael DeMark
Mastering Graham Duncan

Cover Art Mission Notes (oil on canvas; detail), Kay Lamoreux Buckner, 1996

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Jeff LeRoy

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Kacie Brown

Artist Information

Frahm-Lewis Trio

Ensemble

Nathan Buckner, Ting-Lan Chen, and Noah Turner Rogoff form the Frahm-Lewis Trio, which has served as the resident faculty piano trio for the University of Nebraska at Kearney since 2008. The ensemble has appeared in many of the principal performance venues throughout Nebraska, as well as in recitals in England, Malaysia, and the United States.

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Notes

Philip Antony Corri (1784-1832) was from a family of composers active in Regency London. The Corri family members were probably known as much for their scandals as for their work as musicians. Corri’s father Domenico along with three of his own siblings were also composers; sister Sophia was married to composer and pianist Jan Ladislav Dussek. Corri, a founding member of the London Philharmonic Society, immigrated to the United States late in 1816 in large part to escape the sordid family misdeeds. He eventually settled in Baltimore, where he (under the assumed name of Arthur Clifton) became a leader of that city’s musical life. Today he is commonly celebrated, primarily for his American works, however the majority of his quality compositions date from his London years (1805 to 1816).

The three-movement La Morte di Dussek was published in London in 1816, four years after the death of Corri’s brother-in-law. The title page describes the work as “an Elegiac Sonata in F minor for the Pianoforte with an Accompaniment for Violin Obligato and Violoncello ad libitum.” The composer provided a separate violin part but none for the cello, which would have been generated by the cellist. This would have doubled much of the piano’s bass line in the manner of this present realization. The work bears many stylistic similarities to Dussek’s own elegiac sonata of 1806 (Élégie Harmonique, Opus 61), a work which surely served as a model for the present sonata.

The opening Allegro agitato follows first-movement sonata conventions. Principal themes are presented twice, each featuring the piano and violin in turn. The climactic middle section is dominated by the piano, the strings being used to punctuate the piano writing. The Andante moderato which follows is a brief set of variations in A-flat Major. The strings are featured in virtuosic third variation, while the piano assumes a solo role in the extended fugal coda. As with the opening movement, the turbulent concluding Presto non troppo presents the piano and violin alternately for each theme. Here, the middle section nearly assumes the character and function of a solo piano cadenza.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) produced 32 complete sonatas for piano with violin accompaniment — 16 of these were childhood works. These were composed and published during an extended family trip in the mid 1760s planned for prodigies Wolfgang and sister Nannerl to be introduced to royalty and prominent musicians in Paris, London, and Amsterdam. The sonatas were published at their destinations under four opuses. The Opus 3 set (London, K.10–14) was published with both separate violin and cello parts, the cello typically doubling the bass of the keyboard in the manner of accompanied sonatas.

The keyboard-dominant Sonata in A Major (K.12) is in the two-movement slow/fast layout similar to several of these sonatas. For the opening Andante, the melodic material is presented in the treble of the keyboard with the strings accompanying canonic formulae. The following Allegro is a quick, dance-like rondo in triple meter whose themes are again presented by the keyboard whilst the violin is assigned an inner accompanying line.

All 16 of Mozart’s mature violin sonatas were also published during his lifetime. The first 12 of these, dating from the composer’s late Salzburg and early Vienna years, were published in two sets of six sonatas each, and originally bore the recycled opus numbers 1 and 2. The Opus 1 set (K. 301–306) dates from early 1778. While in Mannheim on January 11 of that year, mother Anna Maria wrote to father Leopold that Wolfgang was in the process of composing six new trios to be engraved by subscription. These would be published that summer in Paris immediately following his mother’s death, the distressful circumstances of which are well known. Five of the six sonatas are two-movement works in fast-slow pairings; all six have been particularly noted for their elaborate violin writing, here not always in a subordinate role to the keyboard as it had been with the earlier sonatas.

The opening Allegro of the E-flat Sonata (K.302) begins with a spirited angular theme in triple meter; the second repeated note theme is more textural than melodic. Following the brief middle section, both themes reappear in conventional fashion later in the movement. The following Andante grazioso rondo is perhaps more notable for its moving melodic bass line than for its treble main theme which is again based on a repeating note idea. Contrasting episodes are strikingly melodic by comparison. Following a brief cadenza-like passage, the final statement of the rondo subject appears with a busy, elaborate accompaniment; the movement ends quietly.

A native of Bonn, Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was among Beethoven’s most celebrated students. As with many musicians displaced by the Napoleonic wars, Ries relocated many times throughout Europe, including to Vienna, Paris, London, Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg. Though he outlived his teacher by more than a decade, much of Ries’ work was styled in a fashion strongly suggestive of the influence of Beethoven’s earlier work on points of harmonic language, instrumentation, and formal design.

The second of Ries’s five piano trios was composed in Vienna in 1809, and was scored for piano, violin or clarinet, and cello. The work features fully independent violin and cello parts far more suggestive of Beethoven’s early trios than of typical accompanied sonatas of the day.

The Allegro opening movement follows an unusual key scheme. It begins in the key of G minor and moves through several remote tonalities before arriving in the home key of B-flat Major only in the movement’s closing bars. Themes typically appear twice in succession, each time featuring a different instrument or pairing of instruments. The following Allegro vivace is a quirky scherzo whose principal theme is strikingly similar to that of Beethoven’s first piano trio, Opus 1/1. Its middle section presents the theme in the strings with the piano accompanying with rapid scales and a series of bass pedal points. The melody of the Adagio appears first in the piano before the cello and violin each take their turn. This movement also serves as an introduction to the Allegretto rondo finale. Here, the strings present the rondo subject in full each time before the piano takes its turn. The contrasting episodes are primarily textural, and are dominated by arpeggiated passagework and filigree in the piano.