Norman Rouse (violin)
Douglas Bentley (violoncello) Edward Knight (pianoforte)
Published in 1809, the same year as the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1, used to be called the ' Ghost Trio' because of its eerie slow movement. Sketches for this movement are to be found in one of Beethoven's sketch books immediately after a rough sketch of a witches' chorus intended for an uncompleted opera based on Shakespeare's Macbeth. The libretto, however, was abandoned by Collin, the author of the play Coriolanus, because it bade fair to be too gloomy '.
Frank Bridge's Phantasy Trio was composed in 1908. In 1905 W. W. Cobbett had held the, first of his famous chamber-music competitions, the subject being a Phantasy String Quartet, and Bridge-one of the sixty-seven competitors-had won the second prize. In 1907 a second competition was announced, for trios; again there were sixty-seven competitors, and this time Bridge won the first prize-with the work to be played this afternoon.
The Trio is a good example of the ' phantasy' form: a normal allegro statement of theme ; a slow movement instead of the orthodox working-out (with a scherzo sandwiched in the middle of the slow movement) ; and then a modified recapitulation of the first allegro.