The Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major for piano, violin, and cello, was one of the last compositions completed by Franz Schubert, dated November 1827. It was published by Probst as Opus 100 in late 1828, shortly before the composer’s death and first performed at a private party in January 1828 to celebrate the engagement of Schubert’s school-friend Josef von Spaun. The Trio was among the few of his late compositions Schubert heard performed before his death. It was given its first private performance by Carl Maria von Bocklet on the piano, Ignaz Schuppanzigh playing the violin, and Josef Linke playing cello.
Like Schubert’s other piano trio, this is a comparatively larger work than most piano trios of the time, taking almost 50 minutes to perform. The second theme of the first movement is based loosely on the opening theme of the Minuet and Trio of Schubert’s G major sonata. Scholar Christopher H. Gibbs asserts direct evidence of Beethoven’s influence on the Trio.
The piano trio contains four movments: I. Allegro: The first movement is in sonata form. There is disagreement over the break-up of thematic material with one source claiming six separate units of thematic material while another source divides them into three themes each with two periods. There is to an extent extra thematic material during the recapitulation. At least one of the thematic units is based closely on the opening theme of the third movement of the earlier Piano Sonata in G major. The development section focuses mainly on the final theme of the exposition.
II. Andante con moto: The second movement takes an asymmetrical-double-ternary form. The principal theme is inspired by the Swedish folk song Se solen sjunker, which the composer had heard in the Frohlich sisters’ house, sung by the tenor Isak Albert Berg. III. Scherzo: Allegro moderato: The scherzo is an animated piece in standard double ternary form. IV. Allegro moderato: The finale is in sonata-rondo form. Schubert also includes in two interludes the opening theme of the second movement in an altered version. Schubert also made some cuts in this finale, one of which includes the second-movement theme combined contrapuntally with other material from the finale.
The main theme of the second movement was used as one of the central musical themes in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon. It has also been used in a number of other films, including The Hunger, Crimson Tide and the Piano Teacher, the HBO miniseries John Adams, as the opening piece for the ABC documentary The Killing Season, used throughout the BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and ‘The FInal Solution’, and in the 2023 biographical film, Dance First, about Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.
