Fauré: Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 120

Description

The idea for this, the penultimate work in Fauré's oeuvre, came in 1922 from his publisher Jacques Durand, who had published Ravel's famous Piano Trio just a few years earlier. Fauré initially did not get beyond sketching the work, and for a while he considered using a clarinet as an alternative to the violin. Only when he went to spend the summer in Annecy-le-Vieux in Savoy did Fauré succeed in writing the Andantino, the unusually extensive, elegiac middle movement of this Trio. The outer movements then followed in Paris the next winter. This late work by Fauré is notable for its clear lines and forms and for its balance between the piano and the string instruments.