Schubert’s String Trio in B flat major was composed in September 1816 and only its first movement survives complete (along with a fragment of a second). His only other venture into the medium of the string trio – a complete four-movement work this time – is in the same key and dates from exactly a year later. The earlier single-movement trio was written when the composer was nineteen years old, and this sunny and assured piece sounds almost like a tribute to Schubert’s great forebears Haydn and Mozart, and probably to Salieri too, with whom Schubert was studying at the time he wrote it. However, this substantial but charming sonata form movement is not an exercise in pastiche: there are several distinctive Schubertian harmonic touches, especially in the central development section.

Nigel Simeone © 2011