Piano Trio / Viola Sonata

"I hope that this most desirable release will prompt others to consider Arthur Butterworth's music for future release."
(MusicWeb April 2006)

"I was delighted to come across such tuneful and tonal works from a contemporary composer, and such accomplished and suave playing"
(MusicWeb June 2006)

We have known Arthur Butterworth for his irrepressible brass band music and his Sibelian orchestral scores, including six symphonies. However, late in his career he started to write chamber music, and all admirers of his works for larger forces will find in the two Piano Trios that same evocative voice. In the beautiful First Trio he evokes the spring times and summers of the past, especially a 'radiant summer evening crossing the Baltic' in a language whose harmonic sensibilities explore the modal inflections and spirit of Sibelius's Sixth Symphony. As a conductor Butterworth has always been a champion of Arnold Bax, and in the outer movements of the powerful Viola Sonata he admits to 'a feint whiff of Bax's "Celtic Twilight"'.