Piano Trio in G minor Op.3

Pas trop lent - Animé

Vite

Assez lent

Animé

In 1881, having failed to qualify for the Prix de Rome, Chausson left the Paris Conservatoire, took himself off on holiday to Switzerland and bravely applied himself to a work which, he hoped, would prove the authorities wrong in their assessment of his qualities as a composer. Written in two or three months in that summer at Montbovon, the Piano Trio in G minor was first performed a year later at the Société Nationale de Musique with as distinguished a musician as André Messager at the piano. It failed, however, to do anything for Chausson’s reputation - not because of the quality of the music itself but because no critic was present to review it and no publisher could be persuaded to take it on. It did not appear in print until 1919 and it is only during the last twenty or thirty years that it has begun to take its rightful place in the repertoire.

Although he was registered as a pupil of Massenet in his Conservatoire days, Chausson also attended the classes of César Franck as an observer and it was there that he found the inspiration he needed to supplement the sound technical education he had received from his official teacher. The Piano Trio is, in fact, modelled on Franck’s recently completed Piano Quintet. It is no slavish imitation, however. While it observes the cyclic principles of construction so favoured by Franck, and so convincingly demonstrated in the Piano Quintet in F minor, it does it in its own, rather more subtle way. Whereas Franck tended to build his construction on fully developed themes, Chausson prefers tiny motifs, like the three-note rhythmic figure vigorously bowed by the cello on its first entry in the Pas trop lent introduction and the short but rather more melodious phrase uttered by the violin on its first entry. This does not exclude fully developed melodies of course. There are two choice examples, one for each instrument, in the ensuing Animé section but, fully and dramatically developed though they are, it is with emphatic echoes of the cello’s rhythmic figure that the first movement ends.

The Vite second movement, a deftly scored scherzo, is an intermezzo which has little to do with the cyclic issues initiated in the first movement and about to be revisited in the next two. The main and virtually only theme of the Assez lent, heard on the piano in the opening bars, is in fact a lyrically expressive extension of the violin phrase from the introduction. While the Animé last movement has its own, highly attractive material, its principal function is to review the main themes from earlier movements, to bring the two motifs from the introduction to high-profile prominence and to end the work with a last, lingering reference to them.

Gerald Larner ©2004