Haydn in London

Steven Devine - fortepiano
Simon Standage - violin
Pavel Serbin - violoncello

Haydn: Piano Trio in Eb Hob. XV:29 (1797)
Haydn: Piano Trio in Eb Hob. XV:31 (1795)
Hummel: Piano Trio in Eb Opus 12 (1804)

In the late eighteenth century the combination of keyboard, violin and cello was a popular one in aristocratic and bourgeois homes, and a highly lucrative one for publishers, especially in England. It was primarily to satisfy this flourishing market that Haydn composed twenty-eight keyboard trios between 1784 and 1796. What all commentators agree on is the glorious quality of Haydn’s trios. More intimate than the contemporary string quartets, less concerned with intensive motivic development, the trios mingle relaxed lyricism, a spacious freedom of design, and tonal adventurousness astonishing even by late-Haydn standards. Like the part songs he wrote after his second London visit, they give the impression of being written ‘in happy hours, con amore.