Joan Trimble
Joan Trimble's music joins Impressionist harmony to the melodic and rhythmic turn of Irish traditional airs. She wrote and performed for two pianos, and arranged Arthur Benjamin's Jamaican Rumba for the duo medium she knew from the keyboard.
Her original two-piano pieces and her arrangements of Irish airs sit on the same ground: rhapsodic rhythm, colour and clarity, written without regard to schools or fashion. With her sister Valerie she formed a piano duo for which Arthur Benjamin composed Jamaican Rumba; it became their signature, and she later wrote a personal introduction to surveys of his piano and chamber music. Her catalogue also takes in the Phantasy for piano trio, The County Mayo for baritone and two pianos, a Suite for Strings, and Blind Raftery, a BBC television opera set in the west of Ireland.
Compositions by Joan Trimble appear on
Teamwork
An eminently listenable collection of piano music for four and six hands. Romantic, brilliant and companionable by turns, it is an exciting, all-stops-out tour de force from the Team of Pianists.