44. Crespo Series

Here I am, listen to me.
Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio opens with a great shout, the piano’s fortissimo announcement of the motto theme as if saying – here I am, listen to me. Rebecca Clarke was a pioneering female musician and composer in the first half of the twentieth century, a time of serious prejudice against women composers and, indeed, women musicians. . Her career as a composer – in contrast to her career as a chamber musician - was eventually overwhelmed by a combination of the difficulty of getting her works published and her own self-effacing modesty. Her Trio is a powerful work and we are all the poorer from her not being able to concentrate on composition. Brahms’ magnificent B minor Trio opens with one of his most sublime tunes, a long, spacious theme that accumulates power as it sweeps along with tidal force, a force that speaks of unattainable beauty and irrepressible longing. It is a young man’s work, written when he was passionately in love, a wild sprawling affair that he came back to thirty-five years later and rewrote without losing any of the original passion.