Clarinet Trio (Zemlinsky)

The trio was Zemlinsky's submission to a composition competition offered by the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein to all Austro-Hungarian composers, that asked for a chamber music work scored with at least one wind instrument.

There is some evidence that the work started out as a standard piano trio, and that Zemlinsky replaced the violin with the clarinet at some point to match the requirements of the competition.

Published editions by Simrock and Henle Verlag include a violin part as an alternative to the clarinet.

[2] The work consists of three movements: The trio shows considerable influence of Brahms,[1] and to some extent of Dvořák in its melodies.

Marc Moskovitz writes that the trio "shows the depth of his potential, for the first time fusing his impressive understated lyrical gift with his mastery of the art of developing variation.