Trio élégiaque in G minor, Op.posth

Lento lugubre

In 1882, not long after the death of Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky completed a Piano Trio in A minor “in memory of a great artist.” In 1893, on the day of Tchaikovsky’s death, Rachmaninov started his Trio élégiaque in D minor, which was to be dedicated “to the memory of a great artist.” It was a clearly logical and very proper sequence of events. But that Trio élégiaque was not Rachmaninov’s first: at the beginning of 1892, for no apparent memorial reason, he had written an intriguingly passionate Trio élégiaque in G minor. A shorter work in only one movement, the G minor Trio was composed in no more than four days and, though Tchaikovsky was very much alive at the time, with that composer unmistakably in mind.

The nostalgic opening theme, introduced by the piano after a curiously pre-minimalist introduction on the strings, is not uncharacteristic of Rachman­inov even though there are some Tchaikovsky-like touches in the way it is developed. But when the instrumental roles have been reversed, the melody passing from the piano to the strings, first the violin and then the cello alight on a single repeated note inevitably reminiscent of the requiem chant in the Andante funebre e doloroso of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet in E minor (dedicated to the memory of the violinist Ferdinand Laub). For whom the funeral march treads so ominously at the end of the piece - in the lowest register of the piano under dying echoes of the main theme on the strings - it is impossible to say. But if Tchaikovsky had heard it when the Trio élégiaque in G minor was first performed in Moscow on 30 January 1892 (with Rachmaninov himself at the piano) he might have felt just a little uncomfortable.

Lento lugubre

In 1882, not long after the death of Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky completed a Piano Trio in A minor “in memory of a great artist.” In 1893, on the day of Tchaikovsky’s death, Rachmaninov started his Trio élégiaque in D minor, which was to be dedicated “to the memory of a great artist.” It was a clearly logical and very proper sequence of events. But that Trio élégiaque was not Rachmaninov’s first: at the beginning of 1892, for no apparent memorial reason, he had written an intriguingly passionate Trio élégiaque in G minor. A shorter work in only one movement, the G minor Trio was composed in no more than four days and, though Tchaikovsky was very much alive at the time, with that composer unmistakably in mind.

The nostalgic opening theme, introduced by the piano after a curiously pre-minimalist introduction on the strings, is not uncharacteristic of Rachman­inov even though there are some Tchaikovsky-like touches in the way it is developed. But when the instrumental roles have been reversed, the melody passing from the piano to the strings, first the violin and then the cello alight on a single repeated note inevitably reminiscent of the requiem chant in the Andante funebre e doloroso of Thaikovsky’s String Quartet in E minor (dedicated to the memory of the violinist Ferdinand Laub). The second subject, introduced immediately afterwards by the violin over an undulating accompaniment, might have something of Anton Rubinstein in it but, as it goes on through the ensuing exchanges between violin and cello, the presence of Tchaikovsky becomes ever more apparent.

For whom the funeral march treads so ominously at the end of the piece - in the lowest register of the piano under dying echoes of the main theme on the strings - it is impossible to say. But if Tchaikovsky had heard it when the Trio élégiaque in G minor was first performed in Moscow on 30 January 1892 (with Rachmaninov himself at the piano) he might have felt just a little uncomfortable.