A few weeks ago, we looked at solo piano music by Joachim Raff, his Metamorphosen, this week we revisit the prolific output by Raff. The self-taught composer wrote much chamber music, including the delightful late Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 158.

With a bright opening of arpeggiated chords, Raff sets the stage for the work. While the pianist continues with a workout of chords, the cello joins with a lyrical melody. Quickly Raff takes us unexpectedly from our D Major center to a resolution on a B minor seventh chord, before heading straight back to our major tonality.  The violin joins, echoing the cello melody in a beautiful duet, before the piano turns to more aggressive block chords leading us into a second melody, marked dolce which is passed back and forth between the strings in a beautiful passage.

Raff continues this pattern of sharing the ideas between two instruments, with the piano joining in, but we see a regular pattern of ideas passing between the violin and cello with a flourish of rapid arpeggiation in the piano through much of the movement.  Eventually, this arpeggiation moves to more dramatic harmonic ideas (just after rehearsal letter H), where we see note clusters of minor seconds regularly spread over the octaves.

Taff begins a series of modulations that alternate each voice in a descending figure followed by an undulation in the piano and cell, slowing leading to a massive return of earlier themes at rehearsal L, this time with the arpeggiation in the violin and cello. The piano sings out the theme in massive chords, leading us to a grand finish.

The second movement, Allegro assai, represents a more adventuresome dance form movement, with the notation in 6/4 time.  At the opening, we see the piano take on a more dramatic role - a reversal from the first movement. Once again, however, the violin and cello join in a lyrical duet over the piano accompaniment.  After a long series of passing these melodic lines back and forth between the strings and piano, we see a familiar figure in the arpeggiation of the piano, this time with major 2nd across the octaves, unlike the minor seconds in the first movement.

As we wrap up in D minor, we move to a beautiful slow movement in F# minor, opening with a gorgeous cello line, again quickly echoed by the violin. At rehearsal B, we hear a fugal pattern, with the cello leading, followed by the violin, then the piano. This quickly leads to some beautiful, intricate writing between the three instruments, with the moving lines of each instrument combining to create a glorious sound. The movement winds down to a very slow finish, which brings to mind the tragic love duets of Wagner in his operas, ending with a sound of loss, but in the major key.

The finale, marked Allegro, takes off quickly, leaving us to forget the happy melancholy of the slow movement. Marked as both 2/4 and 6/8, the movement moves seamlessly between the pulse of 3 and 2, but with a constant stream of moving eighth notes and chords that give us an impression more of the classicists of the time than the more Wagnerian sounds we heard in the 3rd movement. Suddently, at rehearsal J, we move to a quiet interlude, passing from the piano, to the violin, to the cello, before scalar passages in the string and chords in the piano introduce a climactic end.

While rarely performed, this is a fantastic work for the piano trio that deserves more performances. We've been able to locate two recordings of the work:
Trio Opus 8
Schultsz, Pezzotti, & Allen