Trio for horn, violin, and piano (Berkeley)

The Horn Trio was commissioned by the pianist Colin Horsley for hornist Dennis Brain, with whom he had enjoyed playing the Brahms Horn Trio. Together with the violinist Manoug Parikian, they gave the first performance of the trio for the Chamber Music Society at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, on Sunday, 28 March 1954 (Gamble and Lynch 2011, 132; Anon. 1954). They also made the first recording, issued on HMV CLP 1029 (Dickinson 2003, 159). The year of composition is given variously as the late 1940s, 1952, 1953, and 1954 (Lamoreaux 1989; Żuk 1997; Anon. n.d. and Dickinson 2001; and Dickinson 2003, 159, respectively). The trio is one of Berkeley's most often performed and recorded chamber-music works (Dickinson 2003, 160).

The trio is in three movements:

1. Allegro
2. Lento
3. Tema con variazioni

The opening Allegro is dominated by the interval of the perfect fourth, and in general alternates pairs of the instruments, rather than using all three together. Although they are not the basis of the entire work, Berkeley's use of fourths in the opening of this movement resembles the free atonality of the Chamber Symphony No. 1 by Arnold Schoenberg, but this sound was also very much in the air amongst British composers at that time, in particular Michael Tippett's Piano Concerto (Dickinson 2003, 159–60). The character of this movement rests largely on its springy rhythms, moving at the end to a calm close in F major (Żuk 1997).

The Lento is a slow dirge with a more lively middle section, and the only movement that shows much affinity with the Brahms trio (Dickinson 2003, 160; Lamoreaux 1989). The long main theme is given first to the horn and then the violin plays transformations of it (Żuk 1997).

The last movement is in F major, and consists of a series of variations on an original theme that nevertheless strongly recalls Mozart (Dickinson 2003, 160). The theme is characterized at the beginning by a leap of a seventh and continues with a song-like melodic line, followed by ten variations (Żuk 1997). The sixth variation is a waltz, and the seventh uses the theme as a ground bass (Dickinson 2003, 160). The harmonies deliberately contrast triadic sonorities with chords built from fourths and sevenths, and there are recollections of motivic material from the first movement (Lamoreaux 1989).

• Trio for horn, violin, and piano (Banks)
• Horn Trio (Holbrooke)
• Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (Ligeti)

• Anon. n.d. "Lennox Berkeley: Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano (1953)". Music Sales Classical website (accessed 28 December 2014).
• Anon. 1954. "Lennox Berkeley's New Work: A Horn Trio". The Times, issue 52893 (30 March): 3.
• Craggs, Stewart R. 2000. Lennox Berkeley: A Source Book. Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate Publishers. ISBN 9780859679336.
• Dickinson, Peter. 2001. "Berkeley, Sir Lennox (Randall Francis)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Dickinson, Peter. 2003. The Music of Lennox Berkeley, second, revised edition. Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press. ISBN 0-85115-936-2.
• Gamble, Stephen, and William C. Lynch. 2011. Dennis Brain: A Life in Music. North Texas Lives of Musicians Series 7. Denton: University of North Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-57441-307-6.
• Lamoreaux, Andrea. 1989. "Berkeley, Lennox (1903-1989): Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, Op. 44". Chicago Chamber Musicians website (accessed 28 December 2014).
• 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 310. Bremerhaven: Żuk Records.