Trio forViolin, Cello and Piano – David Evan Thomas

Composer: David Evan Thomas

Instrumentation: Violin, cello, piano

Duration: approx. 18 minutes

Date Written:  1987, rev. 2001

Premiere: Trio Sine Nomine, Bozeman, Mont., 1987

Program Note:

As with many pieces in the Romantic tradition, this Trio begins in argument and is diverted, with the weight shifted to the finale. The mercurial first movement develops its contrasting materials—a quick five-note W and a mournful phrase—by alternation. Two character pieces follow: a watery, diatonic nocturne and a sentimental song, which ends with a banging door. There is a wide range of material in the finale: piano musings, violent chords, toccatas mumbled and shouted. Eventually the breezy tune from the second movement reappears as a simple string hymn. The tune is treated fugally and in stretto, before being consumed in a blaze.

Trio was composed in 1987 for the Trio Sine Nomine—ensemble in residence at Montana State University Bozeman—on commission from the Montana Music Teachers Association. The members of Trio Sine Nomine at the time were Johan Jonsson, violin, Linda Young, cello and Leslie Jones, piano. It was premiered at the MMTA convention that June. The work was revised in 2001 and premiered by Trio Minnesota (Yuko Heberlein, Robert Jamieson, John Jensen).