Martinů's Piano Trio No. 1, H. 193, from 1930, also called Cinq pièces brèves (Five Short Pieces), occupies an important place in his output especially among the chamber works he composed in France. It took him an unbelievably short time to compose it - only ten days. He confided to his friend Miloš Šafránek the ease and naturalness with which the work was born: "I don't know how it happened that I composed this Trio; suddenly, as though, by the hand of another, I wrote something completely new." The work's short but potent motives, deployed unerringly, forecast the formal principles highlighted in and so intrinsic to his symphonies, which he did not begin composing until after his emigration to America. From the formal standpoint, the trio's compositional innovation suggests more than anything the six Petites symphonies for the chamber orchestra of Darius Milhaud. The fact that Martinů himself was well aware of this work's significance is also shown by two references to the piece in the autobiography he wrote in 1944 in New York, where he mentions it in association with the new use of polyphony in chamber music together with greater emphasis on rhythm.
Programme of the Bohuslav Martinů Festival's concert, December 8, 2003