In addition to the Tapiola Sinfonietta, the work has been co-commissioned by the Dutch Storioni Festival, the Åland Katrina Chamber Music Festival and the Swedish O / Modernt Festival. The title of the piano trio Remain, refers to the idea of quotations, and there are in the trio references to works that have been important to Fagerlund as both a musician and a composer. Through them, he looks at the history of music and his own history, but at the same time it is also a way for him to look to the future. On a more general level, the trio joins the same world of material as his Chamber Symphony premiered earlier in the spring 2022 by the Tapiola Sinfonietta.

In the energetic opening movement, the Piano Trio, Fagerlund passes the music through ritmico, espressivo and arpeggio materials. The materials are repeated in a kind of canonical structure “always in a new relationship with each other and evolving” as the composer states. The slow episode of the movement culminates in an echo reminiscent of the chord sequence of the Rigaudon-movement of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin; According to Fagerlund, it “emerges like a figure from the water and then dissolves away.”

The slow middle movement of the work is constructed in the form A-B-A, where the A-periods are based on the harmonic world of the opening movement but in an expanded and slowed-down form. The central section of the movement (B) is built around a quote from the Sarabande-movement from Bach’s second solo violin Partita. According to Fagerlund, the movement progresses towards the quote and then moves away from it again.

The finale is a six-part rondo constructed around a repetitive theme. The quote in the movement is a reference to a chord sequence from Brahms’ third piano trio, in other words a quote from the Piano Trio genre’s own history. Fagerlund characterizes the finale as synthesis-like, and it includes materials from previous movements as well.

Kimmo Korhonen (Translation Edition Peters)