Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2

Description

The name of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) will be familiar to anyone with a passion for, or professional involvement in, art music. He was many things: a great virtuoso, a composer of audacious piano works, a symphonist and a chamber musician. While the Rachmaninoff of the piano – both in the solo repertory and in works with orchestra – occupies a central place in concert programmes and in the affections of audiences, the same cannot quite be said of his chamber compositions with piano. The two Trios élégiaques, and above all the second, although far from unknown to either listeners or musical historiography, remain on the margins of the repertory. It is difficult to indicate precise reasons for this: does a lingering prejudice against writing so strongly centred on the piano still play a role? Or is it rather that the ‘sentimental’ idiom which so distinctively characterises Rachmaninoff’s music is felt to sit uneasily within the well-mannered world of chamber music? Admittedly, responding to prejudices with further prejudices is hardly ideal, yet there may be a grain of truth in such suppositions.
Without wishing to stray into aesthetic polemics, is it not the case that a certain segment of musicians (and musicologists) regards with suspicion anything that provokes a spontaneous and immediate emotional response? The same prejudice appears to have coloured a large part of twentieth-century criticism, not only in its reception of Rachmaninoff’s music but also of that of Tchaikovsky: in both instances one encounters complaints of a ‘sentimental overdose’, of excessive languor. Seen through the eyes of his own time, Rachmaninoff – a late-Romantic figure in the age of the avant-gardes – may well have aroused some misgivings within the cultivated elite; but such reservations can scarcely be sustained today.
The reference to Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) at the outset of this recording is anything but casual: the two Trios élégiaques, youthful works, and indeed Rachmaninoff’s output as a whole, are deeply marked by the influence of the great Russian master. The model is unmistakable: Tchaikovsky’s Trio op. 50 (1882). This monumental score underlines and reinforces the close bond between Russian chamber music and the elegiac-funereal genre: only a few years earlier, in 1876, Tchaikovsky had dedicated his Third String Quartet to the memory of the violinist Ferdinand Laub (1832-1875). Likewise, the Trio op. 50, ‘in memory of a great artist’, the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein (1835-1881), younger brother of the more celebrated Anton (1829-1894), continues along the same path.
It is precisely to the first movement of this work, the Pezzo elegiaco, that the not-yet nineteen-year-old Rachmaninoff appears to look with fervour as a model for his first Trio élégiaque. Whether by coincidence or by deliberate intention, the composition of the young and already acclaimed piano virtuoso opens by presenting, in retrograde, the famous horn solo with which Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto op. 23 begins. Rachmaninoff had studied, among others, with Nikolai Zverev (1832-1893) at the Moscow Conservatoire. Zverev was in the habit of hosting musical gatherings in his home, and Tchaikovsky was frequently numbered among his guests.
The Trio élégiaque no. 1, cast as a single movement in accordance with the principles of sonata form, is the work of a young composer already in full command of the harmonic and melodic language that would later secure his fame. The Trio dates from the first days of 1892, scarcely a year after he had graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire. It received its first performance on 11 February 1892, with the composer himself at the piano, David Kreyn (1869-1926) on the violin and Anatoly Brandukov (1859-1930) on the cello. Despite the success of this première, the work then fell into oblivion and was not even published. Rediscovered by chance in Moscow in 1947, four years after Rachmaninoff’s death, the Trio was finally sent to press. Its relatively brief duration has undoubtedly helped it to secure a stable place in the chamber repertory.
On the night of 6 November 1893, while cholera was raging in St Petersburg, P. I. Tchaikovsky died. Malicious tongues at once spoke of suicide, supposedly concealed within the chaos of the epidemic so as to avoid scandal; the real causes of his death, and any possible motivations, remain uncertain to this day. There is, however, no doubt as to the reaction of the Russian people to this mournful news: sixty thousand people requested a ticket to attend the funeral of the great composer. On 28 October of the same year, the first performance had taken place of what is now the celebrated Symphony no. 6 by Tchaikovsky. Greeted with a cool reception, it symbolically brought the composer’s musical career to a close, almost as a testament, with its heartrending Adagio lamentoso. It is to this unusual ending that the young Rachmaninoff, bereft of his mentor, seems to wish to attach himself. In this context, and taking even more explicit inspiration in its forms and procedures from the Trio op. 50, the Trio élégiaque no. 2 came into being. In an explicit gesture of continuity with his model, Rachmaninoff even reproduces verbatim the dedication of the Trio op. 50, ‘to the memory of a great artist’.
Rachmaninoff devoted roughly a month to the composition of this work after Tchaikovsky’s death. Its première took place on 31 January 1894, in the Hall of the Nobility Assembly in Moscow, with the composer, naturally, at the piano.
The work opens with a substantial first movement (Moderato) in sonata form. Solemnity and gravity dominate the initial exposition: out of the piano’s plaintive accompaniment there emerges the marvellous first theme, worthy of so great a melodist as Rachmaninoff, first entrusted to the solo cello and then taken up in dialogue by the violin. Constant modulations between major and minor, abrupt changes of atmosphere and tempo, generate a narrative flow that is jagged and tumultuous. The second movement, following Tchaikovsky’s example, takes the form of an extensive Theme and Variations. Its principal motive derives from the fantasy The Rock op. 7 by Rachmaninoff himself, composed just a year before the Trio. Performed by the composer at the piano in the salon of Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), this work received Tchaikovsky’s wholehearted approval. Like a sequence of musical tableaux – an image dear both to Russian musical culture and to Rachmaninoff – the variations unfold one after another. The first of the eight, Allegro, takes as its model the corresponding variation in the Trio op. 50. It is followed by a poignant cadenza for piano alone, then by the imaginative Allegro scherzando, with the bizarre pizzicatos in the strings and the piano’s incisive whirl. The next variation (Moderato) consists of a sustained drone in the strings, set against the crystalline and intimate progress of the piano. In the Istesso tempo, where the tremolo of the violin and that of the piano alternate, one seems once more to hear the cold wind of the Russian steppe, perceived through the window of a small, warm dacha. The sixth variation (Allegro vivace) forms the central climax of the movement. The ensuing Andante and Moderato entrust moments of intense lyricism to the strings. The third movement, unlike the corresponding section in Tchaikovsky’s op. 50, is not a final variation but a distinct, highly virtuosic piece. At the close, in cyclical fashion, the theme that opens the Trio returns – mournful and funereal – to bring the work’s arch to its conclusion.
As is typical in Rachmaninoff’s output, the Trio élégiaque no. 2 underwent two revisions, the first in 1907 and the second in 1917. It is this latter version that has been adopted for the present recording. In addition, and in the interests of coherence of listening, the decision has been taken to omit the repeats which the composer deliberately marked ad libitum in the second movement.
Riccardo Ronda © 2025