by Jonathan Lyness
After the First World War, when Margaret and Gwendoline Davies were back from France and were busy setting up Gregynog Hall as a flourishing centre for the performing arts, whilst Margaret was busy hanging up French paintings collected during the sisters’ European travels before the war, whilst Gwendoline was busy arranging musical services, choral concerts and chamber music soirees and playing her beautiful organ in Gregynog’s Music Room, something strange was happening over in France. The Reed Trio was being invented! It was an entirely French idea and followed, not hot on the heels, but about a century after the earlier invention of the Wind Quintet. I suppose it was inevitable that someone should have thought of it. Eventually!
It was actually the French composer and painter Ange Flégier who thought of it. Today, the name Flégier is almost entirely forgotten, but in 1896, after trying his hand with various combinations of wind instruments, he wrote a Trio for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon, the first known work of this type. Some thirty years later, in 1920s Paris, the first professional Reed Trio emerged – the ‘Trio d’Anches de Paris’ – consisting of oboist Myrtile Morel, clarinettist Pierre Lefèbvre and bassoonist Fernand Oubradous. There followed, immediately, a rival French trio – the ‘Trio d’Anches René Daraux’. Competition was fierce (!) as both trios fought to secure the best commissions from France’s top composers.
The result is a hundred years of amazing works for this instrumental grouping. This month’s pair of concerts, part of Ensemble Cymru’s Music Room Series, feature the EC’s very own in-house Reed Trio – oboist Huw Clement-Evans, clarinettist Chrisopher Goodman and bassoonist Alanna Pennar-Macfarlane. They perform two French works from the mid 1930s, at a time when the Music Festival at Gregynog was at its height, and Reed Trio fervour in France was frankly out of control! Jacques Ibert composed his Cinq Pièces in 1935, and Darius Milhaud created his 1937 Suite d’après Corrette using his own incidental music for a Parisian production of Romeo and Juliet. Both works employ a neo-classical style, a popular trait in France (think Ravel’s famous Le Tombeau de Couperin); both works have multiple short movements (some lasting less than a minute) ranging from sprightly dances to reflective andantes; and both works feature a cuckoo!
The Reed Trio never really took off in c20th Britain, but the eminent English composer Gordon Jacob wrote one. Gordon Jacob, Darius Milhaud and Jacques Ibert were almost exact contemporaries, though Jacob’s Trio probably arrived later (its date is unknown). Like its French predecessors it has a jovial, dance-like feel with a harking back to earlier styles. The British composer Cecilia McDowall, born 1951 and still very much with us, composed her Century Dances in 2005. With them she looks back over time from the c18th to the present day, with dances to represent every age – a baroque Allemande, a Menuet, a Polish Mazurka and a Tango to finish!
Musicians
Christopher Goodman – clarinet
Huw Clement-Evans – oboe
Alanna Pennar-Macfarlane – bassoon
Programme
- Jacques Ibert – Cinq Pièces for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon (1935) 8’
- Darius Milhaud – Suite d’après Corrette for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon (1937) 9’
- Gordon Jacob – Trio for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon 10’
- Cecilia McDowall – Century Dances for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon (2005) 12’
