Trio

Without doubt, the most important chamber music work by Malats, and one of his finest compositions, is his Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano in B Flat Major. It was composed in 1898 and premiered on March 11 that year at the Ateneo in Madrid with the violinist Julio Francés and the cellist A. González in a concert dedicated exclusively to works by Malats.

Malats dedicated the Trio to one of the greatest composers of all time, Camille Saint-Saëns, close personal friend of both Malats and Granados. An unknown gem of the chamber music repertoire, this Modernist work is superior in form, technique and musical content to similar work by Granados, Bretón, Chapí and others.

Malats had considerable knowledge and experience with the trio form. In 1894 at the Sala Érard in Paris he performed four trios by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Godard and Saint-Saëns with C. Flesch and Hasselmann. Given his experiences with chamber music it is not surprising that Malats exhibited such confidence and security in writing his Trio maintaining perfect balance and dialogue between the three instruments which he achieved through masterful control of the formal structure.

This work has a rich harmonic language and none of the Nationalist qualities of his previous pieces. Instead, it reveals Malats proximity to then current European music yet, at the same time, exhibits his personal style and musical knowledge.

The only recording of the Trio was made in the 1970s by the by the Trio Mompou, Madrid, for the label RTVE Música. Source: the original manuscripts are preserved in the Library of the Orfeó Català at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona. Recently, the score has been made available on their web site through the generosity of the Fundación Telefónica.