Rebecca Clarke - Piano Trio (1921) [w/ score]

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Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) - Piano Trio (1921)
Performed by the Lincoln Trio https://www.cedillerecords.org/albums...
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00:00 I. Moderato ma appassionato
10:05 II. Andante molto semplice
16:07 III. Allegro vigoroso

From Kai Christiansen
Slowly but surely, Rebecca Clarke is being rescued from obscurity through sporadic performances of her chamber music works. The sum of her compositions for chamber music, chorus and solo song is about 100 yet only 20 were published during her long lifetime.
The Piano Trio is an extraordinary work of striking originality and craft reflecting some of the most modern influences of the time including Ravel, Bloch and Debussy with its impressionist atmosphere and a deft use of motifs in a cyclical form. It begins with a dark, dissonant and alarming theme: a series of big chords hammered on the piano like the clanging of heavy bells. The theme is a “motto” in that it will recur throughout all three movements in various transformations while retaining its rhythmic and intervallic shape. Its cramped, angular line expands into a simple “trumpet” call, clear and bright, and then onward seamlessly into a second theme with a flowing lyricism of great warmth. The first movement oscillates between the two ideas. The slow, middle movement begins with a much softer version of the motto stretched out in long, sinuous lines by the strings on top of shimmering piano figurations, almost like a misty memory of the first movement featuring, again, the angular motto morphing into the second lyrical theme now exquisitely rarefied. The vigorous rondo finale introduces a third idea: a perky, scurrying theme with an Asian folk character derived from pentatonic and whole tone scales, both lending it a spacious “gapped” quality. Between recurrences of this new energetic refrain, the two previous themes reappear in reverse order leading to a bright, affirmative conclusion. It is often suggested that Clarke’s trio of 1921 is a reflection of WWI with its violent devastation and its dual aftermath of sorrow and renewed hope.

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