CD 73
Piano Trios
As did Beethoven, Ignaz Anton Ladurner published three piano trios as his opus 1, the fi rst of his published works. Ladurner’s opus 1 was printed in Paris in 1793 and hence two years before Beethoven’s famous fi rst work. Ladurner’s trios are forgotten today, and, as far as we know, not even the fi rst edition has survived in its entirety. While the complete parts for violin and violoncello are preserved in the Bibliothèque municipale of Versailles, only the piano part of the fi rst trio still exists. Fortunately, the music collection of the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum has a unique copy of the complete parts for all three trios, which had belonged to the former music collection of the Dominican nuns’ convent in Lienz (eastern Tyrol). These gripping, passionate pieces make it easy to understand how the composer, coming from a Tyrolean mountain village, could have become a musical attraction in the salons of cosmopolitan Paris. The op. 1 piano trios remained Ladurner’s only works in this genre. He later concentrated on other combinations of instruments, although the piano always remained central. These compositions should be regarded in the context of his appointment as the fi rst professor of piano at the newly established Paris Conservatory in 1797, though they were possibly also originally written for his wife, who was a distinguished violin virtuoso. Ladurner was a both conscientious and gifted pedagogue, and he evidently gave teaching priority over composing. Hence only 18 works of chamber music of his were printed, despite the fact that the opera he had composed had already made him popular at the very beginning of his career.
Track 7, 1:22
Sonate III in f-minor
Allegro