Chamber Music Corner—Britta Byström’s Kinderszenen
by Layne Anspach
Britta Byström’s work Kinderszenen for violin, horn, and piano is the focus of this month’s Chamber Music Corner. Britta Byström (b. 1977) is a Swedish composer who did her schooling at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Her compositional work has focused mainly on orchestral music but also includes chamber music, vocal works, and operas. Byström has written solo works for Radovan Vlatkovic and Janine Jansen, to name a few.
Kinderszenen for violin, horn, and piano (2011) is a single-movement work that shares its name with Robert Schumann’s well-known Op. 15 piano work. The title translates to Scenes from Childhood. The opening is for piano with fragmented lines from the other players. The violin introduces the main melodic content, a combination of sustained notes and short rhythmic bursts. The piano maintains continuous sextuplets while the horn interjects. The piano and horn enter with more melodic content as energy grows. A short Calmo brings reprieve from the constant rhythmic materials, but this is short-lived as a faster tempo, Energico, returns. Energico is distinguished by the horn taking over as the dominant melodic voice.
A long, sustained note in the horn opens a second Calmo section, performed slower than the first. This calmo ends much as it started with a sustained pitch, this time held by the violin. A startling chord in the piano brings the work back to the opening tempo and melodic content. This scene is brief, giving way to calmo again, more sparse than its initial appearances.
The end of the final calmo feels like the conclusion of the work, but the ensemble interjects a return to the Energico. Another held note in the horn transitions to the final tempo, Leggiero. Here the opening themes and sound scape return one last time. The work concludes with the opening fragments restated and an extended trill in the violin, dissipating to nothing.
The reference recording is from the album Horn Trios from Mozart to Piazzolla and beyond, Volume 1 (Affetto) with former New York Philharmonic hornist Howard Wall.
