Three Concert Studies Op.31 for piano, violin and cello

Moto perpetuo

Nocturne

Alla bulgaria

It is tempting to think of Alan Bush as one of the great might-have-beens of British music. In terms of education and professional training – as a multi-prize-winning student at the RAM and as a private pupil of John Ireland for composition and Moseiwitsch and Schnabel for piano – he had it all. In terms of sheer talent, it is not inappropriate to compare him with such outstanding contemporaries as Tippett, Walton and Britten. In terms of intellect, which shows most clearly in the structural organisation of his music, he was outshone by none of them. In terms of career, he was by their standards a failure – although, as he once remarked, he “asked for it.”

As a member of the Communist Party, which he joined in 1935, Bush was held at a barge-pole’s length by the English Establishment, including the BBC at one point. Writing as “Dudley Underwood” he won a prize in the Festival of Britain opera competition with Wat Tyler in 1951 but, although it was performed in Leipzig and Rostock within a few years, it was not staged in this country until 1974. None of his other three operas, all of which were also welcomed in East Germany, has ever been seen here. On the other hand, professionally inconvenient though they were, it could be that Bush’s political affiliations lent purpose to a life which, given his extensive private income, might otherwise have had no focus to it. Indeed, Marxist theory and musical principles do from time to time coincide in his work, as in the Dialectic for string quartet, to produce scores of exceptional interest and accomplishment.

The Three Studies, which were first performed by the London International Trio in the Wigmore Hall in 1948, do not pretend to be a piano trio in the same sense that Dialectic is a string quartet. As a study in a specific technical problem, each of the three movement has its own distinctive identity. So, quite deliberately, they have little stylistically or texturally in common, let alone a coherent argument passing from one to the other. According to the composer, the first piece, a contrapuntally enterprising moto perpetuo written largely in octave and unisons, “concentrates on the problems of intonation and also ensemble between the strings and piano in a rapid tempo.” In the Nocturne, eloquent in line and expressive in dissonant harmony, “the emphasis is on balance and quality of tone.” If the last movement, in which “rhythmical difficulties are stressed,” is reminiscent of Bartók, it is because it was that composer who introduced the additive rhythms of Bulgarian folk song into chamber music.