Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Jouni Kaipainen
Trio nr. 3, Op. 29 (1987)
(Trio no. 3)- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Programme Note
I wrote TRIO III on commission by Kuhmo Chamber Music during 1986-87. Originally the piece was to be part of the festival already during the first mentioned summer, but the trio caused me a lot more than usual to think about: the multi-angled psychological intrigue of the piece was not clear to me until the early spring of 1987. Eeva Koskinen, Anssi Kartiunen and Tuija Hakkila gave the work its first performance in the middle of July 1987 in Kuhtmo. TRIO III is the second work commissioned by Kuhmo. I found it natural to dedicate the trio to Seppo Kimanen, and doing so with utmost pleasure.
TRIO III belongs to a suite of works for three instruments where the instrumentation varies for each work. The common denominator is the piano: in TRIO I (op. 21, 1983) it is featured alongside clarinet and cello, in TRIO II (op. 28, 1986) with flute and bassoon, and now, in TRIO III with violin and cello. Here in retrospective I can feel certain similarities between the first and third trio – the second was quite different to the others in its instrumentation – but the last is a considerably bigger piece to bite than the first in all respects.
TRIO III is a work in five movements, which in the form resembles Béla Bartók’s fourth and fifth string quartet in their mirror symmetry. The two first movements of the trio are to be played without pause and the same goes for the fourth and the fifth. In the middle is a slow movement functioning as the mood center of the work, the mental center of gravity.
The first whole starts with a quite slow section, which weaves an increasing number of events to hear below the surface: to start with, the mood is reserved, but rich details are later revealed. The result is a creepy-crawly tissue containing so many options of development that the “solution” comes to a halt halfway through. The music bursts into another, relentlessly progressive movement. In its tonal language, this Presto is clearly related to the seven trumpets sequence in Oliver Messian’s Quartet for the End of Time, but the unison speed in TRIO III is wilder in character an in a way more “impossible”. At the end of the second movement we find ourselves in a situation where the musical form is unsatisfying, deform in a way, even though the first two movements clearly form a suspended bridge.
I have labeled the third movement Funeral March – in quotation marks. It begins like any summer night-music with birdsong and nature sounds, but it soon moves towards the ghostly, “the other side” – a very slow procession music that conjures the darkest, but perhaps also most important, sounds. The idea is: no mercy! In Kuhmo I was often asked if the funeral march of this movement is related to my father’s death a few years prior to the composition. I answered that this was not out of the question, but that the movement was more about watching the news on TV than any particular tragedy. At least I see the distress projected in the funeral march in TRIO III as belonging to the human nature.
The last whole of two movements starts with a bug-like swift, quiet, somewhat sardonically grinning scherzo, which after its short time makes room for music of the last movement, which is of a more cantabile and somewhat comforting character. Why should we, in the midst of all this misery, deny the importance of beauty – this seems to be the innermost question I ask in TRIO III.
Jouni Kaipainen
TRIO III belongs to a suite of works for three instruments where the instrumentation varies for each work. The common denominator is the piano: in TRIO I (op. 21, 1983) it is featured alongside clarinet and cello, in TRIO II (op. 28, 1986) with flute and bassoon, and now, in TRIO III with violin and cello. Here in retrospective I can feel certain similarities between the first and third trio – the second was quite different to the others in its instrumentation – but the last is a considerably bigger piece to bite than the first in all respects.
TRIO III is a work in five movements, which in the form resembles Béla Bartók’s fourth and fifth string quartet in their mirror symmetry. The two first movements of the trio are to be played without pause and the same goes for the fourth and the fifth. In the middle is a slow movement functioning as the mood center of the work, the mental center of gravity.
The first whole starts with a quite slow section, which weaves an increasing number of events to hear below the surface: to start with, the mood is reserved, but rich details are later revealed. The result is a creepy-crawly tissue containing so many options of development that the “solution” comes to a halt halfway through. The music bursts into another, relentlessly progressive movement. In its tonal language, this Presto is clearly related to the seven trumpets sequence in Oliver Messian’s Quartet for the End of Time, but the unison speed in TRIO III is wilder in character an in a way more “impossible”. At the end of the second movement we find ourselves in a situation where the musical form is unsatisfying, deform in a way, even though the first two movements clearly form a suspended bridge.
I have labeled the third movement Funeral March – in quotation marks. It begins like any summer night-music with birdsong and nature sounds, but it soon moves towards the ghostly, “the other side” – a very slow procession music that conjures the darkest, but perhaps also most important, sounds. The idea is: no mercy! In Kuhmo I was often asked if the funeral march of this movement is related to my father’s death a few years prior to the composition. I answered that this was not out of the question, but that the movement was more about watching the news on TV than any particular tragedy. At least I see the distress projected in the funeral march in TRIO III as belonging to the human nature.
The last whole of two movements starts with a bug-like swift, quiet, somewhat sardonically grinning scherzo, which after its short time makes room for music of the last movement, which is of a more cantabile and somewhat comforting character. Why should we, in the midst of all this misery, deny the importance of beauty – this seems to be the innermost question I ask in TRIO III.
Jouni Kaipainen