Notes for: July 25, 2006
Shostakovich composed this trio at the age of 17 while he was a piano student at the Moscow Conservatory. It is a short, one-movement work, reflecting the cautious melodic and harmonic language of the conservative faculty. The impertinent and rebellious Shostakovich of his First Symphony was still two years off.
At the time of the trio’s composition, young Dmitri was deeply in love with a fellow student, Tatiana Glivenko, the daughter of an eminent philosophy professor. Through personal contacts and correspondence, he continued to pursue Tatiana off and on for six years, losing interest only after she married another man and started to raise a family. Since he dedicated the trio to her, some romantically inclined commentators hear a love message in the work.
What’s the evidence? The opening measures present as a recurring motif – two descending half-tones following one another. This motif launches the opening theme played by the violin and appears at the start of three follow-up themes in different rhythms and dress. For the first third of the trio, the descending half-tone motif is inescapable.
The motif then gives way to a romantic cello melody accompanied by tinkling variations and parallel triads in the piano. Here the half-tone motif is conspicuous by its absence.
Now, sequences of half-tones are traditional symbols in music of hopeless longing and yearning. (Wagner made abundant use of the pattern in Tristan and Isolde.) Thus, the trio opens, according to the music’s romantic interpreters, with Shostakovich expressing his longing for Tatyana. In contrast, the romantic cello melody without the half-tone pattern expresses his wished-for fulfillment.
Sure enough, after the opening material is restated, the trio concludes in celebratory fashion with a repeat of the fulfillment theme and a victorious C major chord. Comments one record jacket: Omnia vincit amor.