By comparison with the frequently performed works of his contemporaries Poulenc and Ravel, the works of Darius Milhaud are not often heard today, although he was among the most important French composers of the 1920s and 30s. He began composing in 1912 and did not stop until his death, creating an astonishing output of about 450 known works covering opera, ballet, orchestral works, incidental and chamber music (including eighteen string quartets) and religious music. He has been called a ‘musical omnivore’ as he absorbed influences from the musical life of wherever he happened to be – from Brazil in the 1920s, from America in the 1930s and 40s and always from Europe, especially France.

Born in Aix-en-Provence, Milhaud moved to Paris in 1909 to study under Widor at the Conservatoire (where he later became Professor of Composition, a post he also held at Mills College in California from 1940). After his return to Paris in 1918, following a war-time official posting to Brazil, Milhaud met the influential composer Erik Satie and joined a group of composers called, by Jean Cocteau, ‘Les Six’. The group, which included Poulenc and Honegger, went on several foreign tours including to America, Vienna and the USSR and Milhaud’s work at this time shows the influence of Brazilian music (for example, L’homme et son désir, 1918) and of American jazz (La création du monde, 1923). He was generous to his fellow composers (he assiduously promoted Schoenberg’s music in France) and was chiefly responsible for saving Satie’s manuscripts after the composer’s death in 1925. Milhaud obviously shared Satie’s idiosyncratic sense of humour and contributed to his Musique d’ameublement or ‘furniture’ music, a sardonically descriptive term for background or interval music first coined by Satie in 1917. During the 1920s Milhaud began a systematic study of tonality and developed what was to become a highly distinctive keynote feature of his music, bitonality and polytonality (the combination of two keys or two or more keys used simultaneously). While this may appear to be a difficult concept, Milhaud’s music, through his use of a wide variety of appealing styles and techniques that include jazz, folk music, syncopation and interesting instrumental combinations, generally succeeded in avoiding the harshness and discordancy of much of the Second Viennese School, although his experiments in tonality actually placed him in advance of many other radical musicians of the period. During this period he also experimented with form and was particularly attracted to concision and directness and in writing succinct music that said what it had to say and no more.

Between 1915 and 1968, Milhaud composed prolifically for both film and theatre. In 1936, Jean Anouilh asked him to write the incidental music to his play Le voyageur sans bagage, produced in Paris in 1937. It is this incidental music (op. 157) that subsequently became the Suite for violin, clarinet and piano (op. 157b). The suite is based on the conventional pattern of contrasting movements but this is as far as tradition takes Milhaud whose musical and stylistic ideas in this attractive work are wide-ranging and completely his own. He employs his signature polytonality throughout the suite’s four brief movements, although this is often only apparent to the most attentive listener. The first movement, Ouverture, with its strong syncopation and obvious South American influences, reflects Milhaud’s two years in Brazil, while the second movement Divertissement allows for more gentle and imitative interplay between the violin and clarinet and between them both and the piano. Jeu, for violin and clarinet alone, is a strongly rhythmic and lively folk dance with the two instruments alternately taking the lead. The final movement begins slowly and meditatively before giving way to the energetic, vivacious and jazzy finale.

(Duration: approx. 12 minutes)

Until the final three decades or so of the eighteenth century, a keyboard work (with the keyboard used either as a solo instrument or in combination with other instruments) was commonly understood to be a work for harpsichord (or perhaps organ) and was published as such. The piano (or fortepiano) at this time was a comparatively new invention and it was not until the late 1700s that the instrument began its unstoppable rise to the keyboard supremacy it subsequently achieved. The harpsichord was a familiar instrument both in concert and domestically and, with an eye to the market, composers and publishers naturally did not rush to embrace the new and relatively untried fortepiano. Indeed, throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, sonatas – including even the early sonatas of Beethoven – frequently continued to be described as works for either harpsichord or piano. Mozart, however, enthusiastically embraced the transition to piano and was known to be a superb pianist so both as composer and performer he exercised a great influence on the acceptance of the piano and its repertoire. From the mid-1770s Mozart performed regularly on the fortepiano and, from 1778,  it is almost certain that he intended all his works that included keyboard to be played on the new instrument. He actually bought a piano following his move to Vienna in 1781.

Mozart’s early works in the keyboard chamber repertoire followed the common practice of  being traditional, fully worked-out keyboard sonatas with additional instruments ad libitum taking a subservient place. This genre – known as the accompanied sonata style –  was certainly continued by Haydn for some time after Mozart’s death. The keyboard parts that Mozart wrote for his piano trios however were quickly seen as needing a far greater expressive range and ability to blend with other instruments than was possible on a harpsichord. Rather than the keyboard predominating throughout (as in an accompanied sonata) he achieved, in the trios, a perfect artistic balance between the piano and other instruments, particularly the violin and cello, and this combination was so influential that it was to become a classic ensemble in chamber music literature.

Mozart’s final set of six piano trios (K496, 498, 502, 542, 548, 564) were written in Vienna between 1786 and 1788. K564, written in 1788, the same year as the Divertimento for string trio K563, the ‘Coronation’ piano concerto K537 and his final three symphonies, was first published in 1789, but in London rather than Vienna. At this time, Mozart was again financially embarrassed which has caused some critics to suggest that this comparatively direct and straightforward work was aimed chiefly at the amateur market, as contemporary publishers’ catalogues show that amateur musicians were among their most important customers. Be that as it may, K564 is charming and tuneful and begins with a flowing Allegro in sonata form, the solo piano stating each theme before it is taken up by the violin and cello, a pattern followed throughout the work. The second movement comprises a warm folk-like theme and variations, in which the beautiful interplay between the instruments brings out the essential qualities of each. The work concludes with a vivacious Allegretto in a dotted dance-like 6/8 rhythm that never loses its momentum whether in a wistful minor mood or in a lively peasant dance.

(Duration: approx.18 minutes)

In the summer of 1882, at his holiday home at Bad Ischl, Upper Austria, Brahms settled down to complete two piano trios, one in E-flat the other in C Major. Despite Clara Schumann expressing a strong preference for the former, Brahms soon discarded it to concentrate on the C Major. The piece falls between the completion of the life-affirming Second Symphony and the much darker Third and it shares the complex textures and shifting moods of those masterpieces from the height of the composer’s career. It is fair to say that the overall texture is weighty. In addition to the symphonies, Brahms was also at this time completing his monumental Second Piano Concerto; it is no surprise that, in the Trio, the strings often have to join forces to prevent the sumptuous piano writing overwhelming them. The notoriously self-critical Brahms was sure of the worth of his new work, writing to his publisher Simrock, ‘You have not had so far such a beautiful trio from me and very probably have not published one to match in the last ten years.’

The Allegro opens with fanfare-like melodic leaps. Two main themes are introduced, each, in turn, containing two main ideas which Brahms proceeds to develop with astonishing contrapuntal skill. The rhythmic textures become ever more restless and irregular, reduced in the ear to great swells and ebbs of sound. The energy rarely subsides as the development and recapitulation sections are ingeniously synthesised. An altered, waltz-like version of the opening theme dominates the substantial coda which brings the movement to a close.

The slow movement enters in the relative key of A minor with a theme and five variations on a melody in the style of Magyar folk music. The tune employs a syncopated rhythmic device known as a ‘Scotch Snap’ in which a short, accented note is followed by a longer one. The simplified texture of the music comes as something of a relief and the tempo remains andante con moto throughout. In the penultimate variation, the strings are directed to play dolce (sweetly) whilst, not to be outdone, the piano’s contribution should be dolcissimo sempre (always very sweetly).

The nervous and slightly mysterious scherzo is a little reminiscent of the ‘fairy’ music of Mendelssohn and it frames, in its trio section, one of the most lovely, lyrical melodies which Brahms ever composed.

Some critics have complained that the Finale (marked giocoso – humorous, lively) is, by comparison to the rest of the work, excessively lightweight. Certainly, the music is unfussy and straightforward but it serves as a delightful sorbet counterbalancing and rounding off the heftier preceding musical courses.

(Duration: approx. 28 minutes)