00:00 - I. Lent (quasi adagio)
02:28 - II. Moderato sans lenteur
05:45 - III. Finale: Allegro con moto (sans précipiter le mouvt)
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Bassoon: Libor Šíma
Clarinet: Dirk Altmann
Flute: Tatjana Ruhland
Year of Recording: 2004
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"Begun in December 1923, Koechlin's Précis des règles de contrepoint was completed in September 1925 and published by Heugel the following year. Thus it spans the composition of the Trio for flute, clarinet & bassoon (or violin, viola & cello, or oboe, clarinet & bassoon), which Koechlin tossed off in October 1924. Counterpoint, the chorale, and other tropes of the high Baroque were much on his mind during this period -- even as he worked at La Course de printemps, the most concentrated and bafflingly tumultuous of all his works, his catalog is rife with dozens of chorale realizations, fugues, and examples for his treatises. Consider this: Op. 78 consists of 12 Chorals, Op. 79 of 15 Chorals, Op. 81 of 20 Chorals sur des thèmes anciens (on themes by J.S. Bach), Op. 82 of 24 Chorals sur des thèmes anciens (more Bach harmonizations), Op. 88 of Quatre fugues d'école, Op. 89 of Leçons d'harmonie, Op. 90a of Quatre Chorals en canon, culminating in the magisterial Choral en fa mineur for organ, Op. 90bis, in which the travails of the teacher fluently inform the hand of the master to make an imposing monument exuding a powerfully somber Gothic aura.

Koechlin despised the term "eclectic" applied to his music and in an autobiographical sketch written in 1939 (in the third person) sought to debunk it: "There is much diversity in Koechlin; not disparity, but contrast -- between one work and another and sometimes within the same work...As the late Louis Aguettant once wrote: 'The art of Charles Koechlin, almost paradoxically rich and diverse, could be quite well defined by the saying of Heraclitus: the harmony of the world, like an arch, consists of opposing tensions.'" The Trio exemplifies this, opening with a slow first movement featuring a regular fugal exposition for the bassoon and clarinet, though with the flute's entrance this solemn ritual embarks upon strange and stylistically distant polytonal territory. Similarly, in the Moderato second movement a long, evenly drawn chorale-like melody for clarinet proves, with the flute's entry, to be another fugal exposition whose development, if less eerie than the first's, evokes medieval music with a seemingly timeless plaintiveness. But only with the concluding Allegro con moto, with its chirpily eupeptic first subject, are we given a genuine replete fugue -- quite enjoyable. The Trio's premiere was given, under the auspices of the Société Musicale Indépendante, by René Le Roy on flute, Louis Cahuzac on clarinet, and M. Dhérin on bassoon on May 6, 1927." (Adrian Corleonis)
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