A Trio of Trios

Piano trios in the 18th century were often intended for amateur performance but Haydn’s Piano Trio in C major written in 1797 while Haydn was in London is clearly aimed at professional players. It’s dedicated to the eminent pianist Therèse Jansen Bartolozzi a student of Clementi which no doubt accounts for its demanding piano part. The last movement in a mixture of sonata and rondo form was described by the great pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen as the most humorous in all of Haydn’s music.

Rebecca Clarke was a viola virtuoso and one of the most significant and influential female British composers of the 20th century. As a violist she toured internationally playing with many of the greatest musicians of the time and pioneering all-female chamber groups. As a composer she received very little encouragement and was a victim of persistent prejudice which is perhaps why her output was relatively small. She wrote nothing in the last 35 years of her life and died in New York in 1979 at the age of 93.

The Piano Trio is one of a handful of major chamber works and was runner-up in a competition in 1921 submitted on the advice of her publisher under the male pseudonym ‘Anthony Trent’. Indeed works by ‘Anthony Trent’ were generally received much more favourably by the critics than those by Rebecca Clarke even when they appeared in the same programme! The trio is in three movements linked by a motif which is heard at the opening and repeated in varied forms throughout the work.

The Piano Trio in B major by Brahms has been described as both his first and his last trio – written in 1853 at the age of 21 it was substantially revised 36 years later making it according to Brahms ‘not as dreary as before’. It is this revised version which will be performed by the Wealden Trio. This four movement work has everything – warmth and lyricism muscularity vitality and mystical beauty.

Three Sussex musicians come together to form The Wealden Trio pianist William Hancox violinist Jonathan Truscott and cellist Rachel Firmager.

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