Piano Trio op. 120

Like Fauré’s only string quartet, the Piano Trio in D minor belongs to the group of the composer’s very last works. It too is the only piece Fauré wrote for these forces. It was begun in 1922 and completed at the start of the following year. Initially conceived for clarinet, cello and piano (perhaps under the influence of Saint-Saëns’s Clarinet Sonata, published in 1921), it finally appeared in a version for piano and strings issued by the Parisian publisher Jacques Durand, who had commissioned the work. The Trio received its first performance at the Société Nationale de Musique on 12 May 1923, with Tatiana de Sanzévitch at the piano, Robert Kretty on violin and Jacques Patté on cello. The first movement, cast in sonata form but characterised by thematic working that constantly transforms the musical material, opens with a broad cello theme at once taken up by the violin and accompanied by piano figuration suggestive of a barcarolle. The Andantino has a pronounced lyrical character: the violin and the cello engage in dialogue around a melody of great sweep coloured by the expressive, shifting harmonies of the piano. The mainspring of the finale lies in the tempestuous rhythmic interventions of the piano, which interrupt the long lines of the strings, playing at the octave. The breadth and melodic profusion of the other two movements are counterpointed here by a frenzy that now propels the discourse forward without ever allowing performers or listeners a moment’s rest.