Piano Trio (Tchaikovsky)
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

's Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, was written in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 between December 1881 and late January 1882. It is subtitled In memory of a great artist, in reference to Nikolai Rubinstein, his close friend and mentor, who had died on 23 March 1881. It is scored for the usual combination of piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

, and cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

.

The work's first version was completed by late January 1882. Private performances were held in March and April. The work underwent considerable revision before its premiere on 30 October at a quartet concert of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. The piano soloist was Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...

; the other performers are unknown.

Movements

The piece is marked by a tragic perspective and is in two movements
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:
I. Pezzo elegiaco (Moderato assai - Allegro giusto) (approx 18:00)
II.(A) Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto - (B) Variazione Finale e coda (approx 29:00)

Total timing: approx 47:00.

The variations are as follows:
Var I -
Var II: Più mosso -
Var III: Allegro moderato -
Var IV: L'istesso tempo (Allegro moderato) -
Var V: L'istesso tempo -
Var VI: Tempo di Valse -
Var VII: Allegro Moderato -
Var VIII: Fuga (Allegro moderato) -
Var IX: Andante flebile, ma non tanto -
Var X: Tempo di mazurka -
Var XI: Moderato -
Variazioni Finale e coda: Allegretto risoluto e con fuoco -
[Coda] Andante con moto - Lugubre


The pezzo is a darkly brooding and rather conventional romantic first movement with a beautiful opening cello solo with a theme that returns for a final funeral march. The second movement is rather more unusual: it opens with an almost classical melody, much like Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme
Variations on a Rococo Theme
The Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, for cello and orchestra was the closest Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ever came to writing a full concerto for cello and orchestra. The style was inspired by Mozart, Tchaikovsky's role model, and makes it clear that Tchaikovsky admired the Classical style very...

for cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, and then proceeds with an assured set of variations, also like the Rococo Variations. After working itself into more and more ecstatic heights culminating with the final variation, it suddenly goes through a surprising modulation to the original minor key
Minor scale
A minor scale in Western music theory includes any scale that contains, in its tonic triad, at least three essential scale degrees: 1) the tonic , 2) a minor-third, or an interval of a minor third above the tonic, and 3) a perfect-fifth, or an interval of a perfect fifth above the tonic, altogether...

, and the theme from the first movement returns with an even greater gravity, and the entire piece concludes with yet another death march.

The work, and the second movement in particular, is arguably the most difficult piece Tchaikovsky wrote for piano, whether solo, with orchestra, or in a chamber group. It remains popular, in spite of its length (it plays for more than 40 minutes), for its breathtaking lyricism and the cosmic finality of its final statement.

Background

This was the only work Tchaikovsky ever wrote for the combination of piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

, and cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

. In 1880, his benefactress Nadezhda von Meck
Nadezhda von Meck
Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck was a Russian businesswoman, who is best known today for her artistic relationship with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. She supported him financially for 13 years, enabling him to devote himself full-time to composition, but she stipulated that they were never to meet. ...

, had asked for such a piece, but he refused, saying in his letter to her of 5 November 1880:
You ask why I have never written a trio. Forgive me, dear friend; I would do anything to give you pleasure, but this is beyond me ... I simply cannot endure the combination of piano with violin or cello. To my mind the timbre of these instruments will not blend ... it is torture for me to have to listen to a string trio or a sonata of any kind for piano and strings. To my mind, the piano can be effective in only three situations: alone, in context with the orchestra, or as accompaniment, i.e., the background of a picture.


Strong words indeed. And yet, only a little over a year later, he composed this piano trio without being asked to do so, when any number of other genres or instrumental combinations were also available to him.

In a letter to von Meck of 27 December 1881, he again referred to his "antipathy for this combination of instruments". He wrote:
... in spite of this antipathy, I am thinking of experimenting with this sort of music, which so far I have not touched. I have already written the start of a trio. Whether I shall finish it and whether it will come out successfully I do not know, but I would like very much to bring what I have begun to a successful conclusion ... I won't hide from you the great effort of will required to set down my musical ideas in this new and unusual form. But I should like to overcome all these difficulties....


He completed his rough sketches on 20 January 1882, and virtually completed the scoring by 25 January. On that day he wrote to von Meck again:
The Trio is finished ... now I can say with some conviction that my work is not all bad. But I am afraid, having written all my life for orchestra, and only taken late in life to chamber music, I may have failed to adapt the instrumental combinations to my musical thoughts. In short, I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio, instead of writing directly for the instruments. I have tried to avoid this, but I am not sure whether I have been successful.


He put the finishing touches to the Trio by 9 February (the score is annotated "Rome 28 January-9 February 1882"), and sent it to his publishers on 11 February, asking that Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...

 appear as piano soloist at the first performance. Taneyev, the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen
Wilhelm Fitzenhagen
Wilhelm Karl Friedrich Fitzenhagen , was a German cellist, composer and instructor, best known today as the dedicatee of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme.-Life:...

 and the violinist Jan Hřímalý
Jan Hřímalý
Jan Hřímalý Jan Hřímalý Jan Hřímalý (also seen as Ivan Voitsekhovich Grzhimali (Иван Войцехович Гржимали (13 April 1844 – 11/24 January 1915) was an influential Czech violinist and teacher, who was associated with the Moscow Conservatory for 46 years 1869-1915....

 were given access to the score, and they made a number of suggestions for improvement, which Tchaikovsky accepted.

There was a private performance at the Moscow Conservatory
Moscow Conservatory
The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

 on 23 March, the first anniversary of Nikolai Rubinstein's death, with the above-named soloists, but Tchaikovsky was still in Italy at the time. He returned to Russia in April and heard the Trio for the first time, at another private performance, after which he made further changes. These included inserting a break before the Andante coda and substantially rewriting the piano part of the Finale. Taneyev also rewrote Variation VIII himself, a change that Tchaikovsky approved.

Notable performances

The work was performed during Tchaikovsky's visit to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1891, at a reception for the composer at the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

.
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