Spanish Trios

Trio Arbós

Three years after Granados premiered his Trio in Madrid, his admired friend, Joaquín Malats, whom he had known since they were fellow students in Barcelona of the great piano composer, Juan Bautista Pujol, premiered his Trio in B-flat at the Madrid Athenaeum. Music of exquisite, elegant, and fresh refinement, constant in flight and resounding in inspiration, condenses in its three movements all the creative potential of a musician who died prematurely at 40 years of age. Pedrell himself confesses in the first person his weakness for Chopin in his first period as a composer: “In the year 1872, the chronic nocturnitis from which I suffered, and which was influenced by Chopin and Field, worsened, and I published, almost at the same time, two Nocturnos (in G minor and A major). After a month of intense work, the Trio in C Major op. 50 of Enrique Granados premiered on 22 February 1895, at the Salón Romero in Madrid, the favourite haunt of Madrid’s chamber evenings, as the culmination of a programme dedicated entirely to the music of Granados that included his Quintet and several pieces for piano. The present recording has been made using exclusively the manuscript of the Trio in C Major op. 50, held in the Museum of Music of Barcelona. The difference with the existing editions of the work and with the recordings based on those texts is more than notable.