Robert Gibbs – violin
Adrian Bradbury – cello
Oliver Davies – piano

Georges Antoine – Violin Sonata, Op. 3 (1912–15)
W. Denis-Browne – Pavan (‘To Gratiana, Dancing and Singing’) (1913)
Bax – The Grey Dancer in the Twilight (1915)
Ravel – Trio (1914)

In this continuation of their series begun last September Robert and Oliver will be joined by Adrian Bradbury in Ravel’s magnificent trio, conceived in the war’s early days as a likely ‘oeuvre posthume’ and premièred in January 1915. Bax’s ghostly ‘dance of death’ was ‘influenced in a particular degree by the events of 1915’, while Antoine’s sonata part-composed in Belgian trenches and completed in a military hospital, carries a poignant message of hope. Denis Browne, another young soldier, fell at Gallipoli six weeks after burying his friend Rupert Brooke, of whom ‘To Gratiana’ is said to be a portrait.