Piano Trio in D minor, Op.120

Staying with friends in an idyllic setting between the lake and the mountains at Annecy-le-Vieux in the summer of 1922, Fauré wrote to his wife with the news that he had “started on a Trio for clarinet (or violin), cello and piano.” When the new work was published, however, it was described on the title page as a “Trio for piano, violin and cello,” with no mention of the clarinet, and no alternative version was authorised. It was first performed, with a violin rather than a clarinet, on the composer’s seventy-eighth birthday in Paris on 12 May 1923.

Another news item in Fauré’s letter to his wife from Annecy-le-Vieux was that he couldn’t work for very long at a time and that he was suffering from “perpetual tiredness.” That could well explain the economy of the piano writing, which is one of the distinctive features of the score. He was not lacking in melodic inspiration, however. The opening theme of the first movement is a characteristically fervent expression rising through two octaves as it is introduced by the cello in D minor under broken chords on the piano and then repeated by the violin in counterpoint with the other two instruments. The second subject is a more intimate idea in B flat major undulating through contrastingly narrow intervals on the piano. The purpose of the rest of the movement is to reconcile the differences between the two main themes. Jostled and threaded together in the development, which begins with the first subject rumbling low in the left hand of the piano, they are set apart again in the recapitulation. It is only in the coda that Fauré, quite emphatically, isolates the melodic element they have in common.

The Andantino opens with a lyrical duet in F major between violin and cello. The piano enters the conversation by introducing a new theme, chromatic in line and syncopated in rhythm, but not so different from the first that the violin and cello fail to recognize the likeness and continue the discussion. When the piano introduces the chorale-like theme of the middle section, with more syncopations and an off-beat rhythmic accompaniment, the other instruments take longer to perceive its relevance. Their delayed reaction is expressed in firm unison, however, and with such conviction that it is left to the piano to remind them of the theme of their opening duet as their new dialogue goes on. The first section is recapitulated and developed in such a way as to prepare for a recall of the chorale theme too, this time on violin in a texture that neatly integrates it with a variant of the duet melody in the left hand of the piano.

Fauré did not like verismo opera, least of all Pagliacci. So he was not best pleased when it was pointed out to him that the dramatic gesture that so abruptly opens the Allegro vivo on violin and cello in D minor is a clear echo of Leoncavallo’s “Ridi Pagliaccio.” It can have been no consolation to him that these five notes, which are the source of at least one of the other main themes of the movement, stand out in the construction like a motto theme. For anyone else, however, the Pagliacco motif is an entertaining guide through a country-dance scherzo that, by no means as serious as it at first seems, is destined to end in a jubilant D major.