Primary recording
Piano Trio No. 1: Guernica
Flatiron Trio · Nurit Pacht, violin · Jeremy Findlay, cello · Elena Braslavsky, piano
Bohemia Music · 2007“A tense and profoundly meditative work, allowing no repose.”
Chamber · Op. 15
Gernika
Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano
- Instrumentation
- Piano, violin & cello
- Duration
- ca. 50′
- Composed
- 1999, 2006
- Movements
- 5 · no intermission
- Commission
- Guernica Project Inc.
- Dedication
- “To the victims of violence and war”
- Publisher
- Conwell Publishing Group (ASCAP)
Perusal score
Open the perusal PDF ↗
Performance materials
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01 · Performance
Digital performance edition
Licensed PDF performance score and parts, delivered digitally.
Planned distributionPayhipRequest information →02 · PerformancePrinted performance materials
Printed performance score and parts, produced and shipped on demand.
Planned distributionSubito Music DistributionRequest information →03 · StudyPaperback study score
A compact reading edition. Parts are not included, and this edition is not intended as performance material.
Planned distributionAmazonRequest information →About the work
Program note
Gernika began in New York in 1999 as Movement for Piano Trio. Under a commission from Guernica Project Inc., Vázquez returned to the material in 2006 and expanded it into a five-movement work. Its title uses the Basque name of the town bombed on April 26, 1937; the score is dedicated “To the victims of violence and war.”
The piece does not narrate the bombing scene by scene. It builds a musical act of witness from recurrence and transformation: a cyclic principle binds the five movements, while counterpoint and variation keep the argument in motion. References to traditional music and quotations connected with the Spanish Civil War enter the texture as fragments of remembered culture rather than as decoration.
The five movements form a single concert-length design, but they are not played attacca: normal pauses separate the movements, and the complete work is presented without an intermission. Their tempo sequence moves through slow introductions, driven allegros, a scherzo, and a final moderato. Written for three players but conceived on an expansive scale, Gernika asks the ensemble to hold individual voices and collective force in the same frame.
Further information
Performance options, arrangements, and history.
Movements available separately
Images from Gernika
A three-movement concert selection, performed in that order.
Movement for Piano Trio
The original 1999 movement may be performed independently under this title.
Scherzo on Five Notes
Winner of the Plathner’s Eleven International Composition Competition; may be performed independently.
Gernika IV
May be performed independently under this title.
Further arrangements
Gernika IV for Strings
Movement IV arranged for string orchestra.
Performance materials on requestGernika IV for clarinet, viola, and piano
Commissioned and premiered by Trío Aine on September 12, 2025, at Música en Sobrado in the Monastery of Sobrado dos Monxes.
Score and parts on requestRead the Scherzo announcement ↗Lethe
Orchestral version of movement I, with its own entry in the catalogue.
Rental materials on requestView Lethe →Selected history
World premiereOctober 25, 2006 · Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York City · Flatiron Trio: Nurit Pacht, violin; Jeremy Findlay, cello; Elena Braslavsky, piano.
First movement
Premiered independently in New York City as Movement for Piano Trio by the Momentum Trio.
Complete work
World premiere at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall by the Flatiron Trio.
Galician premiere
Presented at the Via Stellae Festival at Teatro Principal in Santiago de Compostela.
Australian premiere
Performed by the Melbourne Trio at the Macedon Music Festival.
Selected press & scholarship
Further reading
Guernika, Piano Trio No. 1
Ramón G. Balado considers the Trio’s continuous five-movement design, musical language, recording, and historical argument.
Centerpoint Now · World Council of Peoples for the United Nations · 2011Crossing Borders and Time, the Spirit of Music
A first-person reflection on musical identity, cultural exchange, Galicia, Gernika, and the spirit underlying composition.
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