Andante moderato
Allegro con brio
Largo
Allegretto

Shostakovich started his E minor Trio in late 1943, as a successor to his recently-completed Eighth Symphony. It began as a tragic wartime work but a few days before finishing the first movement, it became a response to a much more personal tragedy: the death in February 1944 of his “closest and most beloved friend”, Ivan Sollertinsky, a Jewish musicologist who had introduced Shostakovich to the music of Mahler. Shostakovich was devastated: he had “no words to express the pain that racks my entire being.” For or several months, he could find no music either, but in July he started to compose again, finishing the work on 13 August. The first performance followed in November and despite the private grief that motivated the work, and the inclusion of bitter, disturbing Jewish inflections in the finale, the trio won official approval, winning the Stalin Prize in 1946.

Nigel Simeone © 2011