Piano Trio No.2 in E minor Op.67

Shostakovich’s Piano Trio in E minor – which was written in 1944, between his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies – is a masterful example of its kind. It is also a very rare example in that it treats the medium as a genuine three-part texture (each instrument with its own individual role) rather than as the two-sided affair (with piano on the one hand and violin and cello on the other) characteristic of most piano trios from Mozart’s onwards. The imaginatively scored opening of the work, where the main theme is introduced in false harmonics by the cello and repeated in fugal entries by the violin and then the piano in octaves, is only the first example of a consistent three-part texture.

The second movement is a fierce scherzo in F sharp major incorporating a primitive-sounding trio in G major, where the piano is reduced to an accompanying role for once. In the Largo, to compensate, the piano alone carries the main theme – a series of eight chords starting from B flat minor. They are repeated five times, as in a passacaglia, while violin and cello improvise contrapuntal variations around them. The eight-chord series appears again on the very last page of the work, at the end of a remarkable coda which begins with a passionate recall of the E minor theme and achieves a positively affirmative conclusion in E major.

Throughout the nineteenth century the piano trio was treated not as a genuine three-part texture but as a two-sided affair with piano on the one hand and violin and cello on the other. Although Mozart and Beethoven had liberated the cello from the humble bass-line role assigned to it by Haydn, it was still linked with the violin to make an equal balance with the left and right hands of the piano. With Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio in E minor, written more than twenty years after an extravagantly romantic youthful indiscretion (subtitled Poème) Op.8, the situation is quite different. Here is a rare and masterly example of a Piano Trio with a three-part balance, each instrument having an equal voice.   

The imaginatively scored opening of the work, where the main theme is introduced in harmonics by the cello and repeated in fugal entries by the violin and then the piano in octaves, is only the first example of a consistent three-part texture. Another interesting feature, shared by the Fifth Symphony, is the way the first movement is constructed not on any conventional formal pattern but on a gradually rising tempo. The most obvious acceleration marks the entry of the second theme, with cello and piano in canon under double-stopped chords on the violin.

The second movement is a characteristically fierce scherzo in F sharp major incorporating a primitive-sounding trio in G major, where the piano is reduced to an accompanying role for once. In the Largo, to compensate, the piano alone carries the main theme – a series of eight chords starting from B flat minor. They are repeated five times, as in a passacaglia, while violin and cello improvise contrapuntal variations around them.

The eight-chord series, resolving into a quiet E major, reappears on the last page of the work, at the end of a remarkable coda beginning with a passionate recall of the E minor theme of the first movement. It is an unexpected but inspired way out of an uninhibited rondo which achieves an apparently unsurpassable climax on its own material in broad augmentation and with a piano part so massive that Shostakovich has to resort to the old-fashioned two-part balance to contain it.

Throughout the nineteenth century the piano trio was treated not as a genuine three-part texture but as a two-sided affair with piano on the one hand and violin and cello on the other. Although Mozart and Beethoven had liberated the cello from the humble bass-line role assigned to it by Haydn, it was still linked with the violin to make an equal balance with the left and right hands of the piano. With Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio in E minor, written more than twenty years after an extravagantly romantic youthful indiscretion (subtitled Poème) Op.8, the situation is quite different. Here is a rare and masterly example of a Piano Trio with a three-part balance, each instrument having an equal voice.   

The imaginatively scored opening of the work, where the main theme is introduced in harmonics by the cello and repeated in fugal entries by the violin and then the piano in octaves, is only the first example of a consistent three-part texture. Another interesting feature, shared by the Fifth Symphony, is the way the first movement is constructed not on any conventional formal pattern but on a gradually rising tempo. The most obvious acceleration marks the entry of the second theme, with cello and piano in canon under double-stopped chords on the violin.

The second movement is a characteristically fierce scherzo in F sharp major incorporating a primitive-sounding trio in G major, where the piano is reduced to an accompanying role for once. In the Largo, to compensate, the piano alone carries the main theme – a series of eight chords starting from B flat minor. They are repeated five times, as in a passacaglia, while violin and cello improvise contrapuntal variations around them.

The eight-chord series, resolving into a quiet E major, reappears on the last page of the work, at the end of a remarkable coda which begins with a passionate recall of the E minor theme of the first movement. It is an unexpected but inspired way out of an uninhibited rondo which achieves an apparently unsurpassable climax on its own material in broad augmentation and with a piano part so massive that Shostakovich has to resort to the old-fashioned two-part balance to contain it.

Although, incidentally, the Piano Trio in E minor was dedicated to the memory of the composer’s great friend Ivan Sollertinsky after his sudden death in February 1944, it was conceived when he was still alive. It would be a misunderstanding of the nature of the work to think of it as a memorial tribute in the same sense as, say, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor or Rachmaninov’s in D minor, both of which were written after the deaths of their respective dedicatees.

Gerald Larner©2002