DESCRIPTION:
String Trio, Op. 20 (1927)

I. Sehr langsam
II. Sehr getragen und ausdrucksvoll

Members of the Juilliard String Quartet

The chamber works of Anton Webern, especially those written after his adoption of the 12-tone technique in the late 1920s, present the listener with an enigmatic combination of austere structural integrity and intense, koan-like expressivity. In the Trio for Strings, which Webern began writing in 1926, completed in 1927, and premiered in 1928, the composer seems at first glance to be at his most rarefied. The piece is made of the most tenuous of musical materials; indeed, it is characterized by what scholar Julian Johnson has described as an "ungraspability of surface." Its occasional fits of restless melodic energy are separated by veils of sustained notes and static harmonies that presage minimalist ruminations (indeed, minimalist pioneer La Monte Young's groundbreaking Trio for Strings was composed under the influence of heavy doses of Webern's chamber music). Webern's signature symmetries and palindromes unfold and spin in eccentric motivic orbits, while frequent changes in timbre and articulation add an additional plane of discourse to Webern's contrapuntal shapes.

The first of the Trio's two movements (which was actually composed second) creates a finely wrought pointillistic surface, with angular glyphs set against sustained harmonies that have elicited comparisons to Debussy. The sense of temporal pause is enhanced by the use of another of Webern's signature techniques: some notes appear only in a specific register when they are encountered in their serial order, thus lending an analogous sense of deliberate spatiality and acoustic consistency to the piece's overall sound field -- a technique also used quite famously in the elaborate canons of his next numbered work, the Symphony, Op. 21. The second movement weaves a denser, less diaphanous texture, its semi-contrapuntal substructures and thematic interconnections flowing in more rapid succession and floating nearer to the surface. Themes expand and contrast, widen and narrow in their arcs, and extend in opposite directions around a moving axis. The momentarily held chords serve as suspense rather than repose, while wide intervallic leaps and looser rhythmic divisions resist alighting comfortably on the ear. Of particular interest is the middle portion of the movement, which Webern referred to unassumingly as the development section. Here Webern articulates contours in various positions and durational proportions, in a kind of cubist fashion, while further disrupting the temporal geometry with repeated notes and held harmonies. The drastic contrasts in line and timbre unfold analogously in the movement's dynamics as well, from suddenly proximate sforzandos to distant, whispering harmonics. [allmusic.com]

Art by Frank Stella