Romantic Trios

These two piano trios – a youthful work by Chausson (1881, then twenty-six) and a mature work by Saint-Saëns (1892, fifty-seven) – bear witness to the vitality and diversity of chamber productions in late nineteenth-century France. While the younger composer followed in the footsteps of César Franck, albeit respecting the traditional form of the four-movement trio, his elder liked to break with convention and thus flummox an audience who thought they knew everything about him since his first piano trio, premiered nearly thirty years earlier. Its five-movement structure, surprising rhythmic interplay and mischievous allusions remind us that aging composers were not necessarily traditionalists.