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There will be six concerts in this series, all of which will be broadcast by Seattle’s classical radio KING-FM. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, these concerts will be available live at the KING-FM website, and on concert nights I will lay out the schedule and provide a link to the concert. Chamber music can put a little light into people’s lives.
I’ll provide insights into the musicians if I happen to know them. I’ll also give a preview of the pieces to be played.
Whenever the society programs a piece by Dmitri Shostakovich, it packs the hall. There are a lot of Russian immigrants in the Seattle area, and there is also something about the gray Pacific Northwest climate that makes Shostakovich’s bleakness strike such a chord with audiences.
This Sunday’s Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano in E minor, Op. 67, is a monument of Russian composition and one of the greatest chamber pieces of the 20th Century. It shows how dissonance and even ugliness can be used to state a case and create a message that Stalin’s minions couldn’t decipher. It was written in 1944, and it is dominated by the sounds of horror and mourning. But typical of Dmitri, there is a hint that Hitler was not the only one responsible for all the corpses; some of this was homegrown.
The first movement begins with a spectral, dissonant andante that exhibits inconsolable grief. This is where the handkerchiefs come out. This passage leads to a moderato fugue that does not quite dispel the mood. The poco piu mosso passage briefly hints at the Jewish folk melody that will dominate the finale. This was a favorite tune for both Shostakovich and Prokofiev. The movement opens up with cross-rhythms that form a dance you can’t really dance to. Note that Dmitri likes to put the violin and cello in their upper registers for an otherworldly effect.
The first two videos are by the amazing trio of Martha Argerich on piano, Gidon Kremer on violin, and Mischa Maisky on cello. Their recording of this trio has won awards, and they are the leading exponents of the piece. They capture the both beauty and the horror.
Shostakovich: Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 67, first movement
The second movement is marked allegro con brio, a favorite Beethoven marking. But for Dmitri, this is a manic scherzo that never settles down. Passages of Russian lyrical beauty are interspersed with grisly humor.
The indication largo is the slowest marking in music, and Dmitri used it a lot in his compositions. This slow movement is dominated by block chords on the piano, with the violin and cello playing a threnody, a lament for the dead, in the Russian vein. The handkerchiefs come out again.
The slow movement segues into the finale, which is a dance with death marked allegretto. Here Dmitri plays out the full Jewish theme he has hinted at earlier in the piece, along with material from all three movements. Imagine dancing with a skeleton or a zombie. There is a lot of humor here, but it is a very black Russian humor. Only one who had lived through Stalin’s purges and Hitler’s death machine could write this. At the end, the block chords from the slow movement return adagio, and your screen may get blurry. He ends it with a bit of humor from the violin and cello, and a simple E Major chord with afterthoughts from the strings.
Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975 at age 69 from his four-pack-a-day habit. Had he lived another 16 years, he would have gotten the last laugh.
