Piano Trio (1998)

Judith Weir – who studied composition privately with John Tavener, with Robin Holloway at Cambridge and with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood – was known as a composer of rare skill and individuality even before the BBC commissioned A Night at the Chinese Opera for Kent Opera. But the first performance of that brilliantly witty work at the Cheltenham Festival in 1987 was so effective in accelerating her reputation that two major operatic commissions, for The Vanishing Bridegroom from Scottish Opera and Blond Eckbert from English National Opera, followed in its wake. She has always favoured dramatic or vocal music and even her purely orchestral or instrumental pieces, often equipped with intriguingly suggestive titles, tend to have some kind of poetic inspiration.

While it is a little different in that it doesn’t have the poetic title, the Piano Trio does have the poetic inspiration, as the composer’s own note confirms. “In my previous work, I have often enjoyed inventing titles which attempt to encapsulate the particular world of each composition, but this fifteen minutes piece for violin, cello and piano is simply entitled Piano Trio. What is the reason for this unusually abstract description? I think perhaps that in this piece, the many external impressions which habitually make up my musical world have become too numerous and too personal to be pinned down in the space of few words that a composition title allows. Nevertheless, some listeners may find the following abbreviated guide useful - and others may prefer to ignore it.

“The first movement began in my mind with impressions of Venice as relayed in Schubert's song Gondelfahrer; the crisp midnight air, the dark choppy water, the bells tolling, the gondolier alone in emotional turmoil. Schubert's world is a place where I can find constant inspiration and strength.

“The second movement recalls a time when I was called from a phone box in Africa. At one moment I was alone in my room, the next (or so it seemed in my imagination) surrounded by light, heat and sudden energy and activity. The movement is not, however, an evocation of African music; it takes the form of a scherzo and trio, which collide with each other at the movement's conclusion.

“The third movement formed in my mind whilst I was reading some Gaelic poetry from the Hebridean island of Lewis on Scotland’s far-flung Atlantic fringe. I was thinking of the bleached white beaches in that part of the world, where every object lying on the sand – a washed-up bottle or a bird's skeleton – is a major event in a deserted landscape. The same might be said of this short set of musical variations, where melodic fragments are laid out with plenty of space around them, clear and plain for everyone to hear.”