by Ryan Ebright
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Two-Part Inventions
The works of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach are seen as the culmination of Baroque style, bringing together the prevailing compositional techniques and forms of his age, especially counterpoint, into sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments. His 15 Inventions (two-part) and 15 Sinfonias (three-part) are short contrapuntal works for keyboard arranged in order of key signatures of increasing sharps and flats (omitting some of the less used ones), and were intended for instructional purposes. The selections this afternoon have been arranged for violin and cello.
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor
Dmitri Shostakovich occupies a unique position among twentieth-century composers. In a century of political upheaval and wars that uprooted composers of every nationality, Shostakovich lived and worked his entire life in Russia, or, as it would become shortly after his birth, the Soviet Union. While viewed variously as both condoner and critic of Soviet policies and atrocities, Shostakovich is undisputedly recognized as a master of orchestration and the most talented Soviet composer of his generation.
Surviving two World Wars and enduring one of the more repressive governments in recent history, Shostakovich suffered no lack of inspiration. Throughout his compositional career, Shostakovich put into music what could not be put into words, either for lack of words or the subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) threat of official Soviet denunciation. Despite the immense popularity of his work within the Soviet Union and the accolades he received from the state, he still suffered from two official denunciations and the periodic banning of his work, causing him to live in perpetual anxiety for the majority of his professional life.
The Piano Trio Op. 67 was composed in 1944 (Shostakovich began his first trio in 1923, but never completed it). By 1944, Shostakovich had already composed over half of his fifteen symphonies and was beginning to turn a more serious eye toward chamber music, with the third of his fifteen string quartets composed in the same year. As word was reaching Russia about Hitler’s systematic destruction in camps of millions of innocent people, Shostakovich also learned of the death of his close friend, the musicologist Ivan Sollertinski. Dedicated to the memory of Sollertinski, the Trio evokes the agony indicative of the times.
The Trio consists of the classical four movements, the last two played without pause: Andante-Moderato, Allegro non troppo, Largo, and Allegretto. The Trio begins with a slow introduction in fugal style based on a theme whistled eerily in the high, glassy harmonics of the cello. The violin and then the piano take up this mournful chant, which, transformed into a quicker tempo, becomes the main theme of the movement, which is written in sonata-allegro form. The second movement, a brief scherzo, is characterized by a twisted folkish tune, while the tragic third movement is a stark, modern realization of the passacaglia, a Baroque musical form that is built on a recurring series of chords (heard first in the piano). The finale, which occupies almost half the length of the entire Trio, is closest in form to a rondo (characterized by recurring sections of music) into which reminiscences of the themes from the opening movement and the Largo are incorporated. A sort of danse macabre, the finale was said to have been inspired by the Nazis, forcing their victims to dance by their own graves before they were executed. Whether true or not, the influences of recognizably Jewish folk modalities and rhythms are unmistakable, and the persecutions endured by the Jewish people during those years would affect Shostakovich deeply for the rest of his life, resurfacing again in his stunning Symphony No. 13 (“Babi Yar”) of 1962.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Trio in A minor
Along with his fellow countryman Claude Debussy, French composer Joseph-Maurice Ravel is often associated with the Impressionist school of music (so named for the music’s evocation of moods, places, and imagery, though most composers whose music was labeled ‘Impressionist’ vehemently resisted the categorization). Like Shostakovich, Ravel composed in nearly every musical genre, much of which has become staples of the concert repertoire.
Described by Igor Stravinsky as “the Swiss watchmaker” of music for his painstaking attention to detail (interestingly enough, Ravel’s father was a Swiss inventor), Ravel labored to achieve technical perfection in his music, both in compositional structure and his writing for various instruments. Though he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Ravel developed his own method of composing, creating small, self-contained “blocks” of music which were then assembled into larger, more complex structures.
Ironically enough, the work for which Ravel is most known is one of his simplest, and also perhaps the piece he most despised. Bolero, which Ravel called “a piece for orchestra without music”, is one of the finest examples of a crescendo ever penned. A recent article in the New York Times from April 2008 suggested that the repetitive, almost obsessive nature of Bolero may have been brought about by a rare disease called FTD, or frontotemporal dementia, which Ravel suffered from in the latter part of his life.
The Piano Trio of 1914, however, comes from an earlier period in Ravel’s life. His only composition for this ensemble arrangement, Ravel worked to reconcile the contrasting sonorities of the strings and the piano, and to achieve an aural balance between the three voices. To achieve these goals, Ravel often placed the instruments in their upper registers where their sounds are most distinctive and frequently spaced the strings two octaves apart while placing the right hand of the piano between them. Like the Shostakovich Trio in E minor, the work adopts the standard classical four movements, though the musical inspiration ranges from Basque dance to Malaysian poetry.
The first movement, Modéré, draws on the zortziko, a Basque dance form. Ravel, whose mother was Basque, felt a deep identification with his heritage, and in fact composed the entire piece in a French Basque commune. Notated in 8/8 time, the movement achieves a unique flavor with its 3+2+3 rhythmic pattern. The Pantoum (Assez vif) which follows is a scherzo and trio in traditional A-B-A form which is based on a Malaysian verse form known as a pantoum, wherein the first and third lines of each four-line stanza become the second and third lines of the next. The third movement, Passacaille (Très large), is, like the third movement of Shostakovich’s third movement, a passacaglia. The finale [Final (Animé)] alternates between 5/4 and 7/4 time throughout the movement, recalling the irregular time signatures of the first movement. Throughout the entirety of the work, Ravel challenges the instrumentalists with colorful trills, tremolos, harmonics, glissandos, and arpeggios, earning the piece a reputation as one of the most technically demanding in the piano trio literature.
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