Mayflower Ensemble - 3rd April 2022 - St Michael's Church Southampton Supported by the John Ireland Charitable Trust Trio in D – Clarinet, Cello, Piano I. Allegro non troppo II. Scherzo, Vivace III. Lento – Con moto Nicola Heinrich (cello), Alison Hughes (clarinet), Samantha Carrasco (piano) Trio in D (1912-13) Ireland wrote 3 Trios which included cello and piano: with violin (1907 & 1938) and with clarinet (1912-13). He would likely have heard performances of the Brahms Trio op. 114 (cello, clarinet & piano) prior to writing his own Trio in D. (Brahms had been drawn out of retirement to compose 4 chamber works on hearing the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld - in Ireland’s twilight years he would also write for a particular clarinettist.) Ireland did not publish the Trio in D, and it was only performed once or twice in his lifetime. Ireland was said to be plagued with self-doubt, and destroyed many of his earlier works. The Trio was first published in 2006, from manuscripts preserved in the British Library. The score was incomplete, and reconstruction of the missing music was a collaboration supported by the John Ireland Trust, where manuscripts of other works were referenced, such as an earlier working of Ireland’s 1938 Trio. The result is a score that seems to be describing the composer's response to landscape. Throughout the 3 movements, Ireland achieves a fine balance between the three players, with the themes of the entire work interrelated and revisited. The middle movement ‘scherzo’ is a rare example of Ireland using folksong characteristics. www.mayflower-ensemble.com

Alison Hughes - clarinet Nathan Thomas - video & audio Many thanks to St Denys Southampton, for the use of their beautiful church. OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908 – 1992) 'ABÎME DES OISEAUX' (ABYSS OF THE BIRDS) for solo clarinet from Quartet for the End of Time The French composer Olivier Messiaen is known for his unique use of musical colour due in part to a condition called synaesthesia - he saw colours associated with different “colours” in music. This, along with Messiaen’s devout religious faith and passion for depicting birdsong in his compositions, provides a basis for the solo clarinet movement “Abyss of the Birds”. During World War II, Messiaen was interned in a prisoner of war camp known as Stalag VIIIA. Among his fellow prisoners were a clarinettist, violinist and cellist, so during the winter of 1940 Messiaen composed a quartet for these musicians (the composer completed the group on piano). He was regarded by his captors as harmless, and one officer even provided Messiaen with music paper and pencils. Composing gave Messiaen a form of detachment from his circumstances: "If I composed this quartet, it was to escape from the snow, from the war, from captivity, and from myself. The greatest benefit that I drew from it was that in the midst of thirty thousand prisoners, I was the only man who was not one." The title of the work “Quartet for the End of Time” springs from a passage in the Book of Revelation about the descent of the seventh angel at the sound of whose trumpet the Mystery of God will be consummated and who announces "that there should be time no longer." Of the solo clarinet movement Messiaen wrote: "'Abyss of the Birds' for clarinet alone. The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs." The four musicians performed the complete “Quatuor” on mostly borrowed instruments to around five thousand fellow prisoners on 15th of January 1941.

Recorded in lockdown May 2020