String Trio

This
brutally powerful work was commissioned by the Alban Berg Foundation
to celebrate the centenary of the composer’s birth. It was premiered
on 2 June in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, like so many
of Shostakovich’s quartets, by Oleh Krysa, Fyodor Druzhinin and
Valentin Feigin. It proved to be the last public performance that
Schnittke attended in good health. Just over a month later he had his
first stroke. Seven years later he recomposed the work to make it
into a piano trio so that his wife Irina, a superb pianist, could
perform it.
The
opening theme has a Berg-like pathos of line and harmony. He goes on
to present four further aphoristic ideas, each distinctively
presented but rapidly disintegrating after an initial clarity, all
except the last travelling from peacefulness to dissonance and back.
The final statement just consists of pounding ostinato chords. The
development tries to use the opening theme to reach back in time for
some Arcadian peace but it is rudely shattered by a violently
trilling attack. This is frightening music that musicians close to
Schnittke later felt was a premonition of the composer’s illness. The
recapitulation is equally dissonant with no easy solutions though the
coda does achieve an uneasy quiet.
The
main theme from the opening movement persists at the start of the
Adagio but the soaring violin is now introspective moving away from
Berg towards the late Shostakovich quartets. The gentle second theme
is presented as a violin-viola duet followed by the cello in
harmonics playing a children’s song. They seem unlikely survivors
in this tortured world but repeated attacks from the armoury of the
first movement cannot quite crush their frail but resilient spirit.
The long coda ensures their survival as the last notes climb bravely
into the distance.