Onslow began work on Piano Trio No.9 in G Major, Op.27 immediately after finishing his eighth piano trio. It was completed in the same year 1824. The opening Allegro grazioso is sunny, bright, and upbeat, almost as if it were salon music, however, a massive, turbulent stormy episode in the middle of the movement provides an incredible surprise. The second movement, a lovely Andante cantabile, comes next. Although the next movement is marked Menuetto espressivo e non tanto presto, it is not a minuet in any sense of the word but a hard-driving, powerful scherzo. The genial last movement, Allegro, returns to the mood heard at the beginning of the work.
George Onslow (1784-1853) was held to be in the front rank of composers by such experts as Mendelssohn and Schumann, who freely compared his quartets to those of Mozart and Beethoven and found them not to be wanting. Perhaps no composer more than George Onslow illustrates the fickleness of fame. Onslow was born and lived his entire life in France, the son of an English father and French mother. His string quartets and 34 string quintets were a constant feature of concert programs throughout the 19th century, particularly in Germany, Austria, and England where he was regularly placed in the front rank of composers. His work was admired by both Beethoven and Schubert, the latter modeling his own two-cello quintet (D.956) on those of Onslow and not, as is so often claimed, on those of Boccherini. However, after the First World War, his music, along with that of so many other fine composers, fell into oblivion, and up until 1984, the bicentennial of his birth, he remained virtually unknown. Since then, his music, to the delight of players and listeners alike, is slowly being rediscovered, played, and recorded. Onslow’s writing was unique in that he was successfully able to merge the drama of the opera into the chamber music idiom perfected by the Vienna masters.
