Chamber Music by Robert Helps

“ Two reasons, among others, worked towards making this piece a ‘major’ effort; 1 – I had not written a multiple movement work in several years and 2 – I had always considered my Trio no. 1 (1957) as perhaps the best piece of my early output and I certainly  didn’t want to write a new one that I would view less favorably. In any event, I felt some pressure on me and began by writing perhaps the most important (most serious? most heartfelt?) movement – a lengthy, sustained, and somewhat other-worldly, very slow second movement. That over, the second movement got surrounded by a quite amiable textural allegro first movement and a considerably more torrid and impetuous third movement with the perhaps not-in-the-best-taste, but nonetheless descriptive title ‘Toccata Frustrata.’ ”