String Trio in E flat major Op.31 (1910-11)

Unlike Borodin, Taneyev was not drawn to Russian folk song as material for his music. Although he was a pupil and a close associate of Tchaikovsky, he was more interested in Bach fugues than Slavonic songs and dances, just as he was far more likely to find inspiration in Renaissance counterpoint than in the exotic tunes and harmonies that Borodin found so attractive. His olympian ideals and high artistic integrity – qualities entirely appropriate to a director of the Moscow Conservatoire – did not make him a dull composer, however. If his music lacks the melodic interest of that of some of his Russian contemporaries, it is fascinating for the brilliantly resourceful use he makes of his always serviceable and often engagingly expressive thematic material.

The String Trio in E flat, one of many distinguished chamber works Taneyev wrote in the last twenty or so years of his life – once he had resigned his directorship at the Conservatoire and completed his long-term Oresteya opera project – is a characteristic example of his technical mastery. That much is clear even though the work cannot be performed today exactly as it was written: it was originally scored for violin and viola not with cello but with tenor viola ­– a now obselete instrument, designed by the cellist by A.E. Giehn, that was tuned a fifth above the cello. When, as on this occasion, the tenor viola part is played on a cello (much of it at the original pitch but some of it transposed down an octave) the scoring probably makes an even more sonorous impression. Certainly, from the dramatic opening gesture onwards, the Allegro con brio is so varied in colour and so fertile in textural invention that it could easily be mistaken for the first movement of a string quartet. It is also a structural tour de force in that it assumes a sonata-form shape while avoiding literal repetition, continuing to develop and vary its themes even when recapitulating them.

The other three movements are shorter and less enigmatic. A moto perpetuo rather than a scherzo and trio, the Scherzino is a deftly scored inspiration with particularly effective passages of pizzicato colouring. Although it is the violin that introduces the confiding main theme, the Adagio espressivo seems to have been designed to make a special feature of the tenor viola, represented in this case by the cello as it adds its eloquent voice and flexible line to the passionate exchanges in each of the three sections of the movement. As for the final Presto, it is a highly successful and attractive example of the Haydnesque paradox, the monothematic rondo, each episode being a variant of the recurring main theme.