Page 165 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

For a time, this meant that any sense of tension, conflict, or despair was discouraged in music. There were few ways for a composer to write anything expressively complex or emo- tionally truthful under such constraints.
One acceptable way to cultivate an individual voice, howev- er, was to draw from regional musical traditions. This was considered acceptable given Stalin’s idea that “the develop- ment of cultures national in form and socialist in content is necessary for their ultimate fusion into one General Culture, socialist in form and content.” In other words, nationalistic music in familiar local styles was permissible as an interim step toward a later homogenous society.
Whether or not any composer seriously embraced this
idea, it provided cover for some degree of stylistic variety.
It especially benefited composers from the outer Soviet republics, including Babadjanian, whose Piano Trio evokes Armenian folk music within an aching, late-Romantic style reminiscent of Rachmaninoff. The three movements progress from a nostalgic Largo that blossoms into an impassioned Maestoso, to an elegiac Andante that floats a violin melody (joined later by the cello) over tolling piano chords, to the delightfully rugged Allegro vivace.
The piece was enthusiastically received at its premiere, and Babadjanian was named a People’s Artist of the USSR in 1971. His small catalogue of works and primary occupation as a pianist likely helped him avoid official scrutiny during his lifetime, but have also left him with a modest legacy. The Piano Trio, however, is a magnificent work ready for rediscovery.
— Benjamin Pesetsky
PYOTR IL’YICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–1893) Piano Trio in A Minor, Op. 50
In October 1880, Nadezhda von Meck, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s patron and confidante, wrote to ask: “Pyotr Il’yich, why have you not written a single trio? I regret this every day because every day they play me a trio, and I always sigh because you have not composed a single one.” She en- closed a photograph of the resident musicians she employed, including the young pianist Claude Debussy. Neither the photo nor the letter immediately inspired Tchaikovsky to write a trio, but it put the thought in his mind, and the following year another event would prompt him to write the piece we hear today.
Tchaikovsky had been kept extraordinarily busy in Moscow: he had so many performances that one critic declared, “the last week of the 1880 Moscow musical season might truly be called Tchaikovsky week.” In March of the following year, while resting in Italy, he received word that the pianist Nikolay Rubinstein had died in Paris.
Although their professional relationship had often been tumultuous, Rubinstein was Tchaikovsky’s greatest musical champion, and his death profoundly affected the composer. He decided to commemorate Rubinstein in a piece with a virtuosic piano part. By January 1882, he had worked out detailed sketches for the Piano Trio in A Minor, and was soon satisfied with the trio’s musical content but remained insecure about the practical handling of the violin and cello parts. He wrote to his publisher, “before you engrave it . . . It’s absolutely essential that a stringed instrument expert should give his attention to my bow markings and correct what is unsuitable.”
The piece received a private performance at the Moscow Conservatory on the first anniversary of Rubinstein’s death; it was published the following fall with some revisions and the dedication “To the memory of a great artist.”
2018 Summer Season 165