Benedict Randhartinger (1802-1893) was born in the Austrian town of Ruprechtshofen. He studied violin, piano, and voice with his stepfather. His singing ability and wonderful voice were recognized by his parents, and he was sent to Vienna and entered the famous Stadtkonvikt as a choirboy. There, he met Franz Schubert, with whom he became close friends. The two often gave vocal concerts together. His talent was so prodigious that the director of the Stadtkonvikt, Antonio Salieri, gave Randhartinger free lessons, even after he left it, for close to a decade. He also became close friends with Franz and Ignaz Lachner, as well as Joseph Eybler, the Court Composer. From 1826 to 1832, Randhartinger became the private secretary to one of the most powerful and richest men in the Habsburg Empire, the Hungarian Count Lajos Szechenyi. With Szechenyi's help, in 1832, Randhartinger was admitted to the Court Orchestra as a tenor. He was quickly promoted to conductor and eventually held the position of director. Randhartinger wrote over 2000 works, most of them for voice, although he did compose 2 symphonies. and some chamber works. He is generally considered the most important Austrian composer of songs (lieder) after Franz Schubert.
His Grand Trio dates from 1826 and was dedicated to Szechenyi, no doubt in gratitude for obtaining the very important position of private secretary to the great man. It is in four movements and begins with an Adagio introduction that leads to the main part of the first movement, Allegretto, which, given the nature of the music, probably should have been titled Allegro. The second movement is a lively Menuetto, vivace. It is in the early romantic era style rather than that of the older Vienna Classical era of Haydn and Mozart. Next comes an Adagio. Here, the cello is given a solo to begin, and then the violin before the piano joins in. The music clearly has a vocal quality. The finale, Allegro, is filled with lovely melodies and is exciting.
We were fortunate to find a nearly pristine copy of the original edition published 200 years ago by the Vienna firm of Artaria. A photo of the title page to the original can be seen above. Here and there, one finds a few leftover specs, which in no way affect its readability. It could still serve as a performance copy. But for the fact that the piano part in the original edition has only the piano part and is not a piano score (with the string parts above it), we would have only offered the original (Publishers did not start making piano scores of works until around 1850). To make new parts is time-consuming and costly, but because this is an historically important work, we decided to make a new edition. We offer you the choice of the original edition at a much lower price or our new edition with a piano score.
