have never written a trio. Forgive me, dear friend; I would do anything to give you pleasure, but this is beyond me ... I simply cannot endure the combination of piano with violin or cello. To my mind the timbre of these instruments will not blend ... it is torture for me to have to listen to a string trio or a sonata of any kind for piano and strings. To my mind, the piano can be effective in only three situations: alone, in context with the orchestra, or as accompaniment, i.e., the background of a picture. A year later, he composed the piano trio without being asked to do so, when any number of other genres or instrumental combinations were also available to him. In a letter to von Meck of 27 December 1881, he again referred to his "antipathy for this combination of instruments". He wrote: "... in spite of this antipathy, I am thinking of experimenting with this sort of music, which so far I have not touched. I have already written the start of a trio. Whether I shall finish it and whether it will come out successfully I do not know, but I would like very much to bring what I have begun to a successful conclusion ... I won't hide from you the great effort of will required to set down my musical ideas in this new and unusual form. But I should like to overcome all these difficulties ... He completed his rough sketches on 20 January 1882, and completed the scoring by 25 January. On that day he wrote to von Meck again: "The Trio is finished ... now I can say with some conviction that my work is not all bad. But I am afraid, having written all my life for orchestra, and only taken late in life to chamber music, I may have failed to adapt the instrumental combinations to my musical thoughts. In short, I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio, instead of writing directly for the instruments. I have tried to avoid this, but I am not sure whether I have been successful." He put the finishing touches to the Trio by 9 February (the score is annotated "Rome 28 January – 9 February 1882"), and sent it to his publishers on 11 February, asking that Sergei Taneyev appear as piano