Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (1921)

• Rebecca Clarke composed this Piano Trio in 1921¹ to enter into an annual chamber music competition that was part of the Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music, sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.²
  • Clarke had written her Viola Sonata in 1919 for the same competition. In both cases, she won 2^nd prize. 
• This trio premiered on Nov. 2, 1922, at Wigmore Hall. The performers were Dame Myra Hess, piano; Margery Hayward, violin; May Mukle, cello.³
• Despite its second-place competition win, Clarke had a hard time getting publishers interested in this trio. It was not published until 1928. Clarke scholar Liane Curtis suggests that Clarke’s frustration with this work’s publication process may have contributed to her decreasing pursuance of publication her career progressed – part of why Clarke is still a lesser-known composer today.⁴

Movements 

1. Moderato ma appassionato 
2. Andante molto semplice 
3. Allegro vigoroso⁵

1. Liane Curtis, “Clarke [Friskin], Rebecca,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed May 18, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000044728.
2. Bryony Jones, “But Do Not Quite Forget: The Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (1921) and the Viola Sonata (1919) Compared,” in A Rebecca Clarke Reader, ed. Liane Curtis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 79. 
3. Ibid.
4. Curtis, “Clarke [Friskin], Rebecca,” Grove Music Online.
5. Jones, “But Do Not Quite Forget: The Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (1921) and the Viola Sonata (1919) Compared,” in A Rebecca Clarke Reader, 81.