Lalo started off as a string player—most exceptionally, he played cello, violin and viola (the latter two in a prominent quartet)—and so it is not very surprising that among his earliest compositions (apart from some songs) were a couple of piano trios in which the string writing is a lot more idiomatic than that for the piano—which is over-busy and too weightily chordal when not indulging in Lisztian athleticism. He was, however, a pioneer: almost no nineteenth-century French composer had previously written chamber music except Franck, whose feebly immature piano trios date from a decade earlier than Lalo's infinitely superior first two. In them he reveals a notable gift for long flowing melodies, a vital rhythmic sense and a feeling for excited dynamic contrasts that whip up tension: his scherzo movements (that in No. 2 nevertheless labelled Minuetto) are fresh and individual. Lalo's third trio did not follow until nearly 30 years later, in 1880, by which time he had won a reputation with the Symphonie espagnole and his cello concerto. Not unexpectedly, it is a far more mature and worthwhile work, noteworthy not only for its originality of invention but for its freedom of rhythm and harmony. Its splendidly vigorous scherzo was later orchestrated by the composer and achieved some popularity—we could do with a new recording of it in that form—the slow movement attains a profundity greater than in almost any other work of his, and the finale exudes a confident optimism.
The Stuttgart-based Trio Parnassus, who appeared with a different pianist in their discs of Hummel (6/93), are super-efficient but not heard here at their best. The string players are excellent (the cellist's beautiful lyrical tone can be admired in the rhapsodic solos which begin the outer movements of the C minor Trio), but Chia Chou seems to have the temperament of a soloist rather than a chamber music player, and particularly in the first two trios conspicuously fails to accommodate his tone to his partners: he is consistently so noisy that he unbalances the admittedly uncomfortably crowded texture.'