Piano Trio in A minor
by Maurice Ravel
Composed in extraordinary haste in the summer of 1914, as Ravel was rushing to complete it before enlisting to serve France in the First World War, the Piano Trio in A minor is one of the supreme masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire and arguably the finest piano trio of the 20th century. Its four movements are each formally and stylistically distinct: a Modéré of singular modal beauty; a Pantoum, named after the Malay poetic form, in which two independent musical discourses unfold simultaneously; a Passacaille of austere grandeur; and a finale of dazzling virtuosity. The writing for all three instruments is of a brilliance that has never been surpassed in the genre, and the rhythmic precision it demands — particularly in the Pantoum, where metre and phrase constantly shift — makes it one of the most technically challenging of all chamber works.
Editions
Durand
Maurice Ravel, 1915
Original composer-authorised edition; the primary source text and the basis for all subsequent editions.
Durand
Editorial staff, 1968
Revised edition with corrected engraving; the standard performing text used internationally by professional chamber ensembles.
Henle Verlag
Peter Jost, 2019
New critical Urtext edition incorporating autograph revisions and the composer's correspondence about the text; now the preferred scholarly edition.