Notwithstanding its weaknesses the work was received with favour by the critics, the most pronounced conservatives not excepted.

That the latter gave more praise to it than to Chopin's previously-published compositions is a significant fact, and may be easily accounted for by the less vigorous originality and less exclusive individuality of the Trio, which, although superior in these respects to the Sonata, Op.

4, does not equal the composer's works written in simpler forms.

Even the most hostile of Chopin's critics, Rellstab, the editor of the Berlin musical journal Iris, admits--after censuring the composer's excessive striving after originality, and the unnecessarily difficult pianoforte passages with their progressions of intervals alike repellent to hand and ear--that this is "on the whole a praiseworthy work, which, in spite of some excursions into deviating bye-paths, strikes out in a better direction than the usual productions of the modern composers" (1833, No.

21).