Dmitri Shostakovich:Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8 / Piano Trio No.2 in E minor Op.67

 

Dmitri Shostakovich

Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8 

 

Janine Jansen, viool
Torleif Thedéen, cello
Eldar Nebolsin, piano

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 Performers: Janine Jansen (violin), Torleif Thedéen (cello), Eldar Nebolsin (piano)
- Year of recording: 2012 (Live, Vredenburg Utrecht, The Netherlands)

In one movement, marked "Andante".

Shostakovich wrote his 1st Piano Trio (originally entitled ‘Poème’) when he was only sixteen, and had already spent three years as a student at the Conservatoire in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was then known). His father had died the previous year, lack of food and heat in post-revolutionary Russia was making life very difficult, and Shostakovich’s already frail health had deteriorated. He contracted tuberculosis of the lymph glands, and underwent an operation shortly before his piano graduation recital, at which he played Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata with his neck wrapped in bandages. He was then sent to a sanatorium in the Crimea to convalesce, and it was there that he wrote this Piano Trio. He dedicated it to Tatyana Glivenko, a girl with whom he had fallen in love while he was convalescing, and with whom he maintained a warm relationship for several years.

The Piano Trio is in a single movement, cast in a large-scale sonata form, with two contrasted themes, and a development section that rises to climaxes. But more striking than this formal procedure is the range of material that Shostakovich deploys, and the transformation that themes undergo. The opening theme, with its drooping semitones interspersed with yearning leaps, supplies the material for agitated passages, for a spiky, brooding version of the theme (one of the grotesque touches that seems most like the mature Shostakovich), and for a dramatic climax. This is followed by a dreamy second theme, which Shostakovich took from an incomplete piano sonata. Despite this origin, it seems somewhat related to the first theme: the drooping semitones have gone, but the yearning leaps remain. After the dramatic development, which breaks off suddenly, the themes recur in reverse order.

Already, this student work contains recognizable Shostakovich hallmarks: lyrical melodies coloured by acerbic harmonies, sudden contrasts of pace and energy, insistent rhythms, and spare textures giving way to unashamedly romantic passages and powerful climaxes. All of this we can hear as a preparation for his triumphant graduation composition two year later, the First Symphony. The Piano Trio, however, was not published during Shostakovich’s lifetime, and the edition that appeared after his death was assembled from various autograph sources, none of them complete scores. The last twenty-two bars of the piano part were missing, and were supplied by Shostakovich’s pupil, Boris Tishchenko.

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Piano Trio No.2 in E minor Op.67

Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67, is remarkable for a number of reasons. It was written in

1944, just after his Symphony No. 8, with which it shares its overall structure; it is a lamentation for both Shostakovich's close friend, musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, and the victims of the Holocaust, the news of which horror did not reach the U.S.S.R. until the liberation of the camps began; and it

is his first work to employ a "Jewish theme," a musical tribute that used the scales and rhythms of

Jewish folk music as Shostakovich knew it.

 

Shostakovich began composing the trio in December 1943. He had only completed sketches, which he was able to share with Sollertinsky before Sollertinsky's death in February 1944. Shostakovich performed the piano part in the premiere, on November 14, 1944, in Leningrad, with violinist Dmitri Tsyganov and cellist Sergei Shirinsky, both members of the Beethoven String Quartet.

 

The first movement begins with an Andante canon, the melody played first by the cello in harmonics, which makes it the top voice, then the violin, which becomes the lower string voice, followed by the piano in the lowest register. This then breaks into a slightly faster Moderato, where the same melody is developed into a second one, and the use of canon continues.

 

This movement is followed by a scherzo, but one with bitter humor in the key of F sharp major. It

is a fast, waltz-like whirl of a movement. The B flat minor Largo third movement opens with large block chords from the piano. This chorale theme becomes the ostinato bass of a passacaglia, repeated a total of six times, while the violin and cello are again in canon with a sombre, lamenting melody full of anguished, minor second dissonances between the two parts.

 

This moves immediately into the final Allegretto, again in E minor. Here the Jewish figurations --

the Dorian mode with an augmented fourth and the iambic rhythms -- are used in a macabre dance that is contrasted against a stern march and five-beat climbs up and down the scale. The strings frequently play pizzicato to add to the sharpness of the dance. The movement ends as the dance gives way to the chorale of the Largo, but this time ending in the more comforting key of E major.

 

Andante (0:00)
Allegro non troppo (8:56)
Largo (12:11)
Allegretto (18:47)
Shostakovich composed his second piano trio in 1944. The piece was dedicated to his good friend, Ivan Sollertinsky. It premiered in Leningrad on November 14, 1944.

Autana Trio
Yuri Noh, piano (AD '16, Schenly, Paik)
Ruben Rengel, violin (BM '16, Laredo)
Anna Hurt, cello (MM '15, Robinson)

Advanced Piano Trio Program Gala Concert
April 20, 2015
Mixon Hall