Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor

Composed between 1943 and 1944, and dedicated to the memory of his closest friend, the brilliant musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky who died unexpectedly at the age of 41, Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio follows a long-standing tradition of commemorative Russian piano trios by Tchaikovsky, Arensky and Rachmaninov. But equally germane to the work’s overwhelming impact is the composer’s reaction to Nazi atrocities, in particular the discovery that SS guards had forced Jewish prisoners in the death camps to dig their own graves and dance by them. This gave rise to the macabre musical imagery that haunts the Trio’s extended finale. The first movement opens with the eerie stratospheric sounds of an unaccompanied cello using harmonics to play a slow grieving lament which is subsequently imitated by the muted violin and bleak low notes in the piano. A gradual speeding up of tempo intensifies the underlying sense of unease. The ensuing “Allegro con brio” is fast and brutally relentless, punctuated by angry snarls in the strings and disturbing echoes of banal circus music. Eight starkly enunciated chords in the piano open the “Largo”, a lugubrious passacaglia—these constantly return to form a claustrophobic backdrop to a baleful melody shared by violin and cello. This leads directly into the “Finale” where the violin plucks a grotesque dance melody over repeated notes in the piano, its hypnotic patterns becoming more obsessive as the movement builds up to a furious climax. At this point, Shostakovich unleashes a torrent of sound recalling those opening chords and the first movement’s lament. As the music collapses under the sheer weight of exhaustion, muted violin and cello return with ghostly memories of the dance melody that eventually disappear into the ether.