Although best known as a composer of salon-genre piano music, and also as a woman who made her way as a creative musician in a male-dominated field, Cecile Chaminade composed in many mediums, including orchestral, ballet, and chamber music. In the last named category, the Piano Trio No. 1 in G minor, composed when Chaminade was in her early twenties, is one of her best in the genre. Despite the modest proportions of the four-movement work and a certain clarity in the writing which is usually (but all too glibly) termed Gallic, there are some unexpected pleasures to be found upon hearing.

The opening allegro, in sonata form, while somewhat French in its reserve, has something of Brahms, and even her exact contemporary Elgar, in its darker brown hues, curiously autumnal for so young a composer, yet not oppressively so. The following andante boasts a lyrical main theme (Chaminade was a good tunesmith; some of her themes cry out for words) and a slightly contrapuntal midsection. This is followed by the brief Presto scherzo, propelled by bustling thirty-second notes, cross-rhythms, and punctuated by horn-fifths. Although the Finale, Allegro molto, shows a classical bent towards a rapid, streamlined conclusion and is solidly tonal, there is a remarkable traversal through distantly related keys, strangely premonitory of the progressive tonality which the younger composers of her generation would fully explore years later.

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