The Trio Pathétique by Mikhail Glinka is one of comparatively few piano trios by Russian composers to have found a place (albeit a fairly marginalized one) within the repertory. Even so, it is far less well known than similar works in the genre by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Arensky. That's probably because, as Denby Richards has suggested, "Glinka's trio is not so it easily recognisable as a work by the 'Father of Russian music'...nor does it really fit the title which became attached to it in a published format, in its original scoring for piano, clarinet and bassoon."

The work (which may be played as a conventional piano trio or with clarinet replacing the violin) was composed in 1832. At the time, the 28-year-old Glinka was studying composition at the Milan Conservatory, having traveled to Italy in hopes that the warmer weather would ease his chronic chest condition. He came under the influence of Italian opera composers such as Donizetti and Bellini, which in part explains the character of this peculiarly un-Russian sounding work. As to the title, it is difficult to know whether it might refer to Glinka's daily endurance of the camphorated chest plasters prescribed by his doctors: more plausible, perhaps, is the suggestion that the term "Pathétique" refers to an unrequited romantic attachment. A note on the autograph score reads "I have known love only through the pain it brings," yet the prevailing mood of the work is genial rather than tragic.

The trio is laid out in the conventional four-movement form of the post-Beethoven/Schubert piano trio, and yet it retains the character of a through-composed single-movement piece. The first three movements are intended to be played straight through without a break, and the finale is little more than a brief epilogue which brings a return of material heard previously. The principal thematic idea is presented at the very outset; it is an enervated, unsettled motif which becomes ever more passionate and excitable with each succeeding appearance. Its restless quality counterpoises a luxuriant second idea, and another memorably beautiful melody given out by the cello in the central trio section of the Scherzo. Another wistful and elegiac motif comes later, in the penultimate episode of the work, following which all the various thematic blocks are reviewed during the finale and the work reaches a dramatic, even triumphant conclusion.

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