Classical Music | Music for Trio

Recorded on 02/15/2005, uploaded on 01/23/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

During Adolf Hitler’s brutal campaign against Soviet Russia during World War II, Dmitri Shostakovich (at least at first) became a great patriotic voice as his country struggled to fight back the invading Nazis. His Seventh Symphony, composed in part during the siege of Leningrad, became officially a representation of Russian patriotism and defiance. It resonated with the war-torn people of Russia and even for a brief time in the West was praised as a testament to the Russian spirit. However, by the time he composed his Piano Trio in E minor, op. 67 in 1944, Shostakovich was once again drawing the criticism of Stalin himself. Shostakovich had premiered his tragic Eighth Symphony, a piece officials found ill-suited now that the war tide had turned in favor of Russia.

The Piano Trio in E minor was Shostakovich’s second and last essay for the ensemble, and indeed the only full length work he wrote for it. His only other trio was a youthful single-movement piece composed in 1923, and which still possessed the late Romantic style he soon after abandoned. A four-movement work similar in designs to the Eighth Symphony, Shostakovich composed the piano trio for his friend Ivan Sollertinsky, who died in February of that year at the age of forty-one. He had, however, completed sketches of the work and was able to show them to Sollertinsky before the latter’s death. Besides his friend’s untimely death, the composition of the trio also coincided with the first reports of the Holocaust reaching Soviet Russia. This tragic and ghastly news, combined with Sollertinsky’s supposed Jewish background, led to Shostakovich’s first use of klezmer music in the work’s finale.      Joseph DuBose

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Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello No. 2 in e minor      Dmitri Shostakovich

Andante-Moderato; Allegro con brio; Largo-Allegretto

Shostakovich composed fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets, but wrote only two trios for violin, cello and piano. The first-a student work from 1923 when he was seventeen years old-has remained in manuscript. Trio No. 2, written in 1944, is a tense, tragic work of the war years, dedicated to the memory of Ivan Sollertinsky, a musicologist  and one of Shostakovich's close friends and earliest supporters. The work premiered in November 1944, with the composer as pianist.  The incorporation of Russian-Jewish dance music in this trio has sometimes been misinterpreted as providing light relief in an otherwise serious and dramatic work. Shostakovich did not mean the incorporation of dance music to be amusing, but included it to commemorate the death of the Jews, slaughtered by invading Nazis.

The opening movement, an elegiac and lyrical Andante, begins with the cello playing at the top of its range and the violin in the lower register. Halfway through the movement, the music becomes more animated, while keeping its gravely lyrical character. The second movement is a typical Shostakovich scherzo, rhythmic and free. The trio reaches its emotional climax in the third movement, a short and simple but eloquently expressive Largo, an "epitaph" in a form resembling that of a passacaglia or a chaconne, with the violin and cello weaving continuous variations over the sustained hymn-like chords of the piano. This movement leads directly into the final Allegretto, whose principal theme seems to recall that of the first movement. The music has the character of a ceremonial folk dance, a war-dance, or a grim processional. It rises to a grand climax that suddenly is interrupted by the theme of the opening movement. The main theme of the finale returns, followed by one from the first movement.  At the very end, the piano chords from the second movement bring the work to a quiet conclusion.    Jupiter Trio

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.