Cecile Chaminade, once very popular for her salon pieces, particularly in England, has long been dismissed in serious musical circles. The current Grove, repeating the previous edition, ends the briefest of entries with the judgment: “Notwithstanding the real charm and clever writing of many of Chaminade’s pieces, they do not rise above drawing-room music”.
Standing out among the few longer works listed are these two piano trios, both early, in which she confidently controls larger forms, building on her unfailing melodic gift. It is characteristic that in the first movement of the Piano Trio No. 1, written in 1881 when she was 24, the central development section culminates in the most striking melodic writing of all, eclipsing the main themes themselves. Robert Maycock in his perceptive note for the disc – far outshining the Grove entry – draws a parallel between this movement and early Faure in the “agitated density of counterpoint”, and there is comparably busy writing in the Molto agitato finale. In between come the two most characteristic movements, the Andante passionately lyrical and the Scherzo sparkling in a deliciously Mendelssohnian way. The Piano Trio No. 2, written six years later in 1887, is weightier, almost Brahmsian, with themes rather more positive, but remembering the Scherzo in the earlier Trio one regrets that she didn’t include one in this three-movement work.
With positive, warmly expressive performances from the Tzigane Piano Trio, if with Gillian Findlay’s violin not always ideally sweet, this is another attractive addition to ASV’s growing collection of rare romantic chamber works. For fill-ups come four of the miniatures for which Chaminade was always best-known, all arranged for piano trio. The arrangements for three of them are the work of the Tzigane pianist, Elizabeth Marcus, all originally for solo piano, while the most striking piece, Serenade espagnole, arranged by Kreisler, is taken from a song. '