[13] Roger Nichols (2020) concurs and considers the most striking feature of the Trio is its depth of feeling, "especially in the central Andante where, in his favourite B flat major and over a continuously pulsing quaver movement, he gives full rein to his lyrical gifts".
The analyst Claude Caré likens the introduction to "a very grand centuries-old portico", Wilfrid Mellers calls it "quasi-Lullian"[15] and both Hell and Nichols find clear echoes of the ceremonious French overture and "the Versailles of Louis XIV".
A new theme in F minor – which in a traditional sonata form movement might be the second subject[15] – is succeeded by a middle section at half speed, in which Mellers hears the influence of Gluck.
[19] The mood becomes less idyllic towards the end of the movement: in Mellers's words, "the delights of pastoral F major [become] shadowed with chromatics", and the final chord is in F minor, a key associated with dirges.
The music maintains what Caré calls a frenzy of movement ("frénésie du mouvement"),[20] the piano playing without a single bar's rest, and the "ironic voice" of the oboe contrasting with the bassoon.
Mellers comments that this finale has affinities with a baroque French gigue, an Offenbach galop, and – "in the tight Stravinskian coda – the acerbity of post-war Paris".
[18] Le Ménestrel said after the second performance: Hell calls the Trio the composer's first major achievement in the sphere of chamber music,[22] and praises "the perfect coherence of its construction" and its "innate equilibrium".
When it was reissued on CD, Robert Layton wrote in Gramophone, "The special tang of the two French wind players in the engaging Trio of 1926 (recorded two years later) is inimitable; a rather thin, papery sound but like everything here very characterful".
Reviewing it in 1988, Will Crutchfield wrote in The New York Times, "Unfortunately, the trio was recorded with bad balance and aggressively close miking, but the flavor (tart Mozart pastiche juxtaposed with popular song) comes through".
Among them are those by Pascal Rogé (piano), Maurice Bourgue (oboe) and Amaury Wallez (bassoon);[26] James Levine, Hansjörg Schellenberger and Milan Turković;[27] Julius Drake, Nicholas Daniel and Rachel Gough;[28] Éric Le Sage, François Leleux and Gilbert Audin;[29] the Melos Ensemble;[30] the Nash Ensemble;[31] Fibonacci Sequence;[32] and the Poulenc Trio.