Trios for Piano, Violin & Violoncello in B-flat major D 28 and E-flat-major D 897 Op.post.148

Schubert Trios for Piano, Violin & Violoncello in B-flat major D 28 & E-flat-major D 897 Op.post.148 (Score & Parts)

In 1922, while sifting through Schubert manuscripts in the Vienna Stadtbibliothek, Alfred Orel came upon the manuscript of a piano trio, entitled “sonata”, which was known to exist from a remark by Ferdinand Schubert but had fallen into oblivion.  Apparently this work was one of those works that Johannes Brahms and Eusebius Mandyczewski wished not to publish.  “I felt”, wrote Brahms at the time “that studies or preliminary essays of this sort ought not to be published.  Instead, they should be cherished and preserved, and perhaps made available to a few people in manuscript copies.  The only person who can take genuine and supreme pleasure in such pieces is the artist who views them and – with what delight! – studies them in seclusion.  I must beg your forgiveness, for in general one is inclined to disagree with me, so you needn’t be disturbed by the slight discord.”

Today we are less exacting.  Not only are we curious to learn that the fifteen-year-old grammar school pupil was grappling with sonata-allegro form as a crucial problem of musical design, we also take simple pleasure in an attractive piece of music.

In addition to his two great piano trios – that in E-flat major, Op.100 (D 929), written between late 1827 and early 1828, and that in B-flat major, Op.99 (D 898), probably composed in April and May of 1828 there also exists a single Adagio movement for piano trio in E-flat major (D 897) which probably dates from the same period.

- Urtext of the New Schubert Edition