Piano Trio in C minor, Op.2

It would take an uncommonly perceptive listener to attribute Suk’s Piano Trio in C minor to a Czech composer. When he wrote the first version, as a fifteen-year-old student at the Prague Conservatoire in 1889, he would have been at least aware of Smetana’s Piano Trio and the first three of Dvorak’s, all of which are unmistakably Czech even if none of them is as intimately associated with the folk idiom as the “Dumky” Trio Dvorak was to complete two years later. Suk, however, seems to have found his inspiration elsewhere, primarily in Germany but also, unlikely though it might seem, in France. It is no less remarkable, even allowing for the fact that the score was twice revised - the second time under the supervision of Dvorak, who persuaded his student to reduce the original four movements to three by leaving out the Scherzo - that the work is so very accomplished.

The wide-striding main theme of the first movement, presented without preliminaries by piano and strings in unison, is clearly derived from the similarly dramatic opening bars of Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat which, as a violinist, Suk would surely have known from a performer’s point of view. He is not at all likely, on the other hand, to have known the music of his obscure Parisian contemporary Emmanuel Chabrier. But it is Chabrier who, after the cello’s sensitively hesitant introduction of the lyrical second subject and its fervent expansion by the whole ensemble, is vividly called to mind by the playful closing theme of the exposition. The dancing figuration persists alongside the two main themes in the development section and is instrumental in closing the movement rather more cheerfully than it began.

The source of inspiration of the slow movement, which sways throughout to the seductive rhythm of the habanera, was probably not Spain, which was far from Czechoslovak musical thinking, but France, where the habanera was a particular favourite with composers at the time. The Vivace finale is nearer home with perhaps a hint of a Czech folk dance in the sprung rhythms of the main theme and an echo of Dvorak in the melodic charm of the lilting second subject. Far from the high drama of the opening of the work, the light-hearted ending is a confirmation of the change of direction that occurred in the first movement and has scarcely been in doubt since then.