Piano Trio in A Minor

Exquisitely crafted with a late Romantic glow, Amy Beach’s Piano Trio, Op. 150 draws on an array of influences, including an Inuit folk song. The 71-year-old Beach composed the score while spending the summer of 1938 at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Though concise at 15 minutes, it encompasses many creative strands. The first movement (“Allegro”) strikes a languid tone, with richly expansive melodies in the violin and cello and piano arpeggiations that suggest the hazy edges of French impressionism. Most intriguing is the central movement (“Lento expressivo”), whose brisk middle section features a scampering tune drawn from an Inuit melody, The Returning Hunter, that Beach had quoted 30 years earlier in her suite, Eskimos. The meditative outer sections of the movement are based on another early work, her 1897 Heine setting, Allein. The third movement (“Allegro”) opens with a syncopated, ragtime-like melody. More languid sections follow before the piece builds to a grand climax and ends with a joyous flourish.