Output details

Piano trio

The commission for a work for the conventional piano trio formation opened up a research question relating to the way in which the ensemble, and the piano in particular, might simultaneously be an icon for two seemingly unrelated musical genres, both of which have accrued the communality of a ‘classical’ status. The exploitation, even if brief, of a quasi-polystylistic puzzle, is a compositional concern I have wrestled with before, and informs the Trio on a sub-textual level pertaining (broadly speaking) to timbre and material. The Trio is a compact, single movement work in two distinct sections that share the same musical material and together contain the components that might under other circumstances form a conventional Classical trio of ‘sonata form': 'lento', 'scherzo' and 'allegro-finale'; likewise, both sections include an interrelated, piano-led lyrical intervention. An asymmetrical but balanced relationship between the two sections is explored, ratified and ultimately expanded via the agency of the Coda. Two great American songwriters died while I was writing the Trio and this was the catalyst that led to my closing the work with a piano riff derived from a key motif centred around a diminished fifth. It provides an unexpected link between 1950’s rock‘n’roll and a 19th-century chamber sensibility that ends the work with an eroteme of possibility. It also raises both a question and an expectation about the contemporary interaction of two strongly characterised historical stylistic identities and the resultant tension is a core driver of the work’s narrative.

Première: Fournier Trio 17 October 2011, Wigmore Hall, London; subsequent performances: Thursday 12 July 2012, Chichester Festival. Recording: Fundatia Radio Romania: DDD14; Ensemble Profil, 26 January 2012, National Culture Centre, Bucharest (broadcast). Shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber Composition, 2012.