String Trio (1962)

Like several British composrs who made their living mainly by working for the film studios, William Alwyn was not taken as seriously by the critics of the day as those who, though not necessarily more accomplished or more progressive, concentrated their energies on the concert hall and opera house. Even before he wrote the last of his not far short of 200 film scores, however, he did find time to write more than a few chamber and orchestral works, including a symphony, the Third completed in 1956, which was greeted by John Ireland as the finest of its kind since Elgar’s Second.

The Third Symphony was the first of Alwyn’s scores to use his own adaptation of serial technique, which he was to apply to several later works, notably the Fourth Symphony and the present String Trio. Although there is a 12-note row in the String Trio – it is first heard after the briefly energetic introduction – it is allied with tonal harmonies and, since he liked to break it down into segments, it is rarely heard in its entirety. Both the deftly scored Scherzo and the poetically expressive Cavatina are based on shorter thematic groups, the series appearing in full only in the central trio secton of the Scherzo. It is heard for the last time in a slow epilogue to the finale.

Like several British composrs who made their living mainly by working for the film studios, William Alwyn was not taken as seriously by the critics of the day as those who, though not necessarily more accomplished or more progressive, concentrated their energies on the concert hall and opera house. Even before he wrote the last of his not far short of 200 film scores, however, he did find time to write more than a few chamber and orchestral works, including a symphony, the Third completed in 1956, which was greeted by John Ireland as the finest of its kind since Elgar’s Second.

The Third Symphony was the first of Alwyn’s scores to use his own adaptation of serial technique, which he was to apply to several later works, notably the Fourth Symphony, the piano Preludes, and the present String Trio. Although the the String Trio is based on a 12-note row, it is consistently allied with tonal harmonies and, since the composer liked to break it down into segments, it is rarely appears in its entirety. The complete row is heard for the first time after a brief Allegro molto introduction of energetically bowed and quietly plucked unisons. A not unlyrical melody presented on violin over a sustained note on the cello, it is developed in Bartok-like canonic textures before a return of the opening Allegro molto material and an evanescent Adagio ending.

The Molto vivace, a deftly scored scherzo, is based on a shorter series, from which Alwyn derives a variety of themes all of them related both to each other and to the twelve-note row familiar from the first movement. In case it is not so familiar, he re-introduces it in its complete form in the central trio section, which is linked to the outer sections by a rhythmic figure prominent elsewhere in the movement. The same 12-note row but a different fragment from it supplies the melodic material for a poetically expressive Cavatina, a quietly thoughtful inspiration except at the climax where a passionate violin rises high over arpeggio figures on viola and cello and descends towards the closing bars in an expressive recitative. The last movement, beginning like the first with an energetic unison, shares rhythmic and thematic figures with the scherzo. After a slower episode ending with a vigorous pizzicato, it recalls the series in its twelve-note entirety, this time in an augmented version that serves as a reflective epilogue to the whole work.