When the trio for piano, violin, and cello evolved from the Baroque trio sonata (which was usually performed on four instruments) in the late 1700s, the piano’s string companions often were treated as optional. The earliest works by the godfather of the form, Joseph Haydn, were called “Sonatas for pianoforte with accompaniment of violin and violoncello,” and often the cello was reduced to doubling the keyboard’s bass (supplementing the instrument’s weak lower range at the time), while the violin was allotted a nominal amount of thematic material. Mozart began to correct the inequity, and Beethoven, not surprisingly, effected a proper balance, if not invariably a conventional chamber music texture.

With the Bonn master’s “Archduke” Trio, the trio as quasi-concerto was born, creating a technically demanding showpiece for three. This description applies to two piano trios by Mendelssohn: Both are compositions in which superior musicality is joined in happy union with instrumental dazzle. Trio No. 2, written in 1845, gives further evidence—if any were needed—that Mendelssohn was a wonderfully predictable composer. For whatever medium he wrote he easily summoned the large quantities of elegance and flair that were intrinsic to his nature. He began very early to reveal true distinction in music for small instrumental forces: At the tender age of 16 he produced a masterpiece—the incomparable Octet for Strings, which displays a staggering precociousness in all compositional elements and fully proclaimed the composer’s rare gifts.

Mendelssohn’s early training was carefully guided. Sunday musicales in his well-to-do parents’ home provided occasions to hear a variety of music and perform his own compositions. It was in this atmosphere of musical stimulation amid the warmth of the family circle that young Felix prepared himself. This close-knit family circle included Felix’s cello-playing brother, Paul, for whom he wrote his first cello sonata, and the violinist Ferdinand David, who was the dedicatee of the E-minor Violin Concerto. With his keen understanding of the two string instruments, and as a pianist of exceptional abilities, Mendelssohn was fully equipped to compose trios that are wholly idiomatic for the three instruments.

Composed a year after the Violin Concerto, the C-minor Trio has all the solid craftsmanship of its predecessor if not its lofty, irresistible lyricism.

The first movement begins quietly with the piano’s announcement of a main theme notable for its stern but agitated demeanor and its flexibility due to its non-melodic character. The fluid theme is repeated almost exactly by the strings and then treated throughout the movement in all manner of imitative and contrapuntal ways, often fragmented in a give-and-take between keyboard and strings. A lyric second theme brings typical Mendelssohnian warmth to the movement.

The slow movement has a gentle lyric quality, cousin to the composer’s Songs Without Words for piano. There are many compositional felicities along its placid course, and it remains for the quicksilver Scherzo that follows to give the trio a major kick in the temperament.

The finale, marked Allegro appassionato (one of the composer’s favorite directives), is less impassioned than it is emphatic and serious. As a thematic surprise, Mendelssohn introduces a version of a Lutheran chorale tune, which adds a strong measure of dignity to an ensemble scheme that is exceptionally virtuosic and sonorously extroverted. Did the religious interjection cause a turn from C minor to C major toward the end of the trio? Perhaps. At any rate, the race to the finish line is filled with fiery pianistics, soaring strings, and a fortissimo final cadence worthy of a concerto.

—Orrin Howard