The music of Belgian composer Joseph Jongen is often overlooked outside of his works for organ (we looked at a work for viola & piano a few months ago). Jongen’s dramatic style and lush harmonies, however, sound wonderful in his works for other instruments, like his rarely hear Trio for Piano, Violin & Viola ('Prélude, Variations and Finale’), Op. 30 that we look at today, written in 1906-1907.

Rather than following the standard instrumentation of Piano, Violin & Cello, Jongen uses the viola as a midrange voice, producing a more rich sound in the strings, while often leaving the bass function to the piano. This is very clearly heard at the opening of the work, where bass notes and arpeggiated chords in the piano provide harmonic structure, which the violin and viola join in octaves with the main melodic idea, creating a very rich tone quality to open the work. Eventually, the piano takes over the melodic idea, before the violin comes back alone, followed by the viola, with the piano undulating below them in sounds that could easily be mistaken for the harmonic language of Ravel by the unaware listener.

After moving us back to the octaves in the violin and viola, Jongen moves to double stops in both instruments giving an even richer string sound, before winding quickly down to a pianissimo section that features a solo viola line over sustained chords to end the Prélude.

The piano quietly opens the second movement, ‘Variations,’ with the introduction of a simple theme. The strings join in with a second theme singing over the piano, and we’re off to a series of intricate variations on these two themes. Some sections feature one theme, while others feature both, keeping your ears engaged through the much longer second movement with the constant variation.

The Finale movement opens with an extended passage featuring just the piano in a lively introduction, with the strings picking up the opening theme, trading ideas back and forth. The theme slowly adapts as we move to a more slow idea (a slightly modified inversion of the opening theme of the second movement!) giving us a short interlude in the high energy finale before returning to the opening piano idea, with pizzicato string interjections. A series of chromatic chord changes takes us into a code of sorts, joining the violin and viola again before a series of 2 measure hemiola chords in the strings finish the work.

This wonderful work is unfortunately rarely played today, though the Ensemble Joseph Jongen released a recording of the work in 2003.