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Trio for horn, violin and piano (Banks)

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The Trio for horn, violin, and piano is a chamber-music work by the Australian composer Don Banks. It was composed in 1962 and premiered the same year at the Edinburgh Festival. A performance takes about 15 minutes.

History

The Horn Trio was commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival, and was written especially for hornist Barry Tuckwell, violinist Brenton Langbein, and pianist Maureen Jones, in part because they were all Australians, like the composer (Hill 2001, 170). Tuckwell's virtuosity was particularly important in stimulating the conception of this trio, as well as the Horn Concerto that Banks composed for Tuckwell three years later (Covell 1967, 180).

Analysis

The trio is in three movements:

  1. Lento–Allegro moderato
  2. Adagio espressivo
  3. Moderato, scherzando

There is some disagreement concerning the compositional techniques employed. While Banks most often employed twelve-tone serial techniques in his concert music, one writer contends that the trio is an exception (Covell 1967, 180), while another describes it as atonal as well as serial (Hill 2001, 170).

Whatever the technical basis, the work is economically built from a small group of basic ideas, with an emphasis on the descending semitone and a perfect fourth (Covell 1967, 180; Hill 2001, 170).

After a slow introduction, the first movement falls into five main sections: a lyrical first section, a passage of fluctuating tempos featuring muted horn and sul ponticello violin, a slow section based on the unifying falling semitone, a horn cadenza, and a reprise of the first main section (Żuk 1997).

The second movement is slow and lyrical, in four sections defined in part by different pairings of the instruments. It opens with a long, flowing idea in the horn, accompanied by the piano. This is followed by a duet for violin and piano, then a con fantasia cadenza for horn and violin. In the final section, all three instruments sound together at last (Sitsky 2011, 61; Żuk 1997).

The finale is light in mood, in 6/8 time and marked scherzando, but in form is a rondo with a coda. The episodes develop the slow material from the third section of the first movement (Żuk 1997). The piano in this movement is marked by many bars of repeated quavers, and functions similarly to the rhythm section of a jazz ensemble (Sitsky 2011, 61).

See also

References

  • Covell, Roger. 1967. Australia's Music: Themes for a New Society. Melbourne: Sun Books.
  • Hill, Douglas. 2001. Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance. Miami: Warner Bros. Publications. ISBN 978-0-75790-685-5 (cloth); ISBN 0-75790-159-X (pbk).
  • Mann, William. 1968. "The Music of Don Banks". Musical Times 109, no. 1506 (August): 719–21.
  • Sitsky, Larry. 2011. Australian Chamber Music with Piano. Canberra: ANU E Press. ISBN 978-1921862403 (pbk); ISBN 9781921862410 (ebook).
  • Żuk, Zbigniew. 1997. "Dedicated to the Brilliant Horn-Soloist Barry Tuckwell". Liner notes to Horn Trios. Zbigniew Żuk, horn; Jan Stanienda, violin; Piotr Folkert, piano. Recorded 18–20 March 1997 in Bydgoszcz Philharmonia Hall. CD recording, 1 disc: 12 cm, digital, stereo. Żuk Records CD 310Bremerhaven: Żuk Records.
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