“The Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, for violin, cello and piano, Op. 67, by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1944, during World War II. The composition was dedicated to Shostakovich’s good friend, Ivan Sollertinsky, a Russian polymath and avid musician, who had recently died aged 41. The work received its premiere in Leningrad on 14 November 1944. The piece consists of four movements, with a complete performance running 25 to 27 minutes.
The first movement is highly dissonant, it begins with an extremely difficult passage in the cello, all harmonics. The rest of the movement starts with canonic material, but then develops into a sonata form, requiring incredible amounts of technical prowess from all three instruments. The second movement is a frenzied dance that never finds a settling place. In the third movement the violin and cello trade off dark, slow, and somber melodic lines against a repeated background of piano chords. It fades into the last movement with hardly a break. Staccato repeated notes begin the final “Dance of Death” movement, which introduces a Jewish-style melody, and revisits the thematic content of the previous three movements. It ends in a tortured E major chord, almost inaudibly. The Jewish melody from the last movement was quoted in Shostakovich’s famous String Quartet No. 8.”
– Wikipedia 2020
Performed by Emmanuel Ax (Piano), Isaac Stern (Violin) and Yo-Yo Ma (Cello)
Andante – 00:05
Allegro con brio – 08:06
Largo – 11:11
Allegretto – 16:05