Mathias's only piano trio was composed in 1965 for the Tunnell Trio, which commissioned the work and gave its premiere on 9 July in the Town Hall at that year's Cheltenham Festival. The piece comes almost directly between the two major early orchestral works, the Concerto for Orchestra, Op. 27 (for the RLPO) and the Symphony No. 1, Op.31 (for the CBSO). Mathias's writing is exuberant but always tautly controlled. His control of structure - articulated in terms of a personal brand of sonata form - is already masterly. In the opening movement the material is tightly integrated but the rhetorical discourse unfolds naturally. The scherzo is a rhythmic tour-de-force while the slow movement blends lyricism and rhetoric in a manner which is characteristically Celtic. The finale is a bright, even occasionally folksy rondo with the odd American twinge from time to time.
Geraint Lewis