Top Ten Piano Trios

We begin where the piano trio itself essentially began: with Haydn, in whose hands it grew from something akin to a sonata for violin and piano (with bass reinforcement from the cello) into a genre where all three instruments asserted themselves more and more – he's represented here with his G major Trio Hob. XV:25, with its famous "Hungarian" finale. Beethoven and Schubert took Haydn's developments further, giving the cello an even more integrated role – the instrument is especially prominent in the wonderful slow movements of the two works included here. The height of the Romantic period is represented by trios by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, as well as Dora Pejačević's magnificent, grandly Romantic essay in the genre. Ravel's mercurial Trio (with its brilliant Spanish-tinged finale) then brings us to the early 20th century, while Shostakovich's alternately moving and acerbic Second Trio, composed in 1944, alludes to the catastrophic events that later scarred the century.

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