Trios by Beethoven, Bloch and Tchaikovsky

Performed by the Moscow Rachmaninoff Trio comprising:
Viktor Yampolsky (piano)
Mikhail Tsinman (violin)
Natalia Savinova (cello)

PROGRAMME:
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano, Violin and Cello Trio, Op. 1 No 3 in C Minor

Ernest Bloch
Three Nocturnes for Piano, Violin and Cello

Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Piano, Violin and Cello Trio in A Minor In Memory of a Great Artist, Op. 50

The Rachmaninoff Trio is well known to music lovers throughout the world. In the nineteen years since it was founded the musicians have won great affection from the public, respect from their colleagues and acclaim from critics both in Russia and internationally.
The Rachmaninoff Trio’s concerts and recordings have received rave reviews from such respected publications as BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, The Strad, Fanfare, Diapason, The Independent, The Observer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Bund and Russkaya Mysl among others.
The Rachmaninoff Trio has represented Russia as part of the programme of the Year of Russian Culture in Germany as well as in China, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands.
The musicians have appeared at numerous highly prestigious international forums, among them UNESCO, the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2005 the ensemble took part in a celebratory concert at the Indonesian Presidential Palace in Bogor, the musicians performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Indonesian Symphony Orchestra.
The musicians of the trio regularly appear at such acclaimed international master-classes as Villa-Musica in Germany, the International Gustav Mahler Academy in Italy and classes at the Shanghai and Beijing Conservatoires.
In the 2006–2007 season with the support of Gazprom the trio’s musicians organised and ran master-classes and concerts at the four top conservatoires of China in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
In 2012 as part of the Year of Russia and the Netherlands, with the support of Gazprom the ensemble held master-classes at the Maastricht Academy of Music.
As part of the project Outstanding Masters of the International Performing Arts for Young Talents in Russia, run with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and Gazprom, members of the ensemble invite other musicians from other countries to Russian conservatoires for shared concerts and master-classes. Among those to have taken part in the project are Jürgen Kussmaul (viola), Wolfgang Holzmair (baritone), Wiener Staatsoper soloist Eliane Coelho (soprano), La Scala soloist Silvia Mapelli (soprano), Olivier Darbellay (French horn), Sergio Delmastro (clarinet) and Yair Kless (violin) to name but a few.
The concert geography of the Rachmaninoff Trio’s performances is incredibly broad, ranging from Japan to South America and from Russia’s extreme northern territories to Singapore and Indonesia.
The Rachmaninoff Trio organises the annual international piano trio festival Rachmaninoff Trio and Friends, inviting the world’s great piano ensembles to Moscow. Over the past five years the festival has seen performances by musicians from Austria, Italy, Germany, France and Brazil.
The Rachmaninoff Trio arranges annual series of chamber music concerts at the halls of the Moscow Conservatoire, the Moscow International House of Music and the Tretyakov Gallery. Alongside the Russian performers, these concerts feature internationally acclaimed classical musicians from various countries.

Ludwig van Beethoven selected three piano trios for publication as his first opus, which had by that time already been performed in Vienna for Prince Lichnowsky. In 1795 they were printed with a dedication to the Prince. There was a misunderstanding connected with Trio No 3 in C Minor, which cast a shadow over Beethoven’s already complicated relationship with his teacher Joseph Haydn. Haydn had advised against printing the trio, fearing that it would be badly received due to its complexity. It was, however the Trio in C Minor that was to prove the greatest of successes. Many years later it was even published as an arrangement for string quintet (as Op. 104).
The complexity of the trio comes from its dramatic character. In the first and third movements as well as – with revived energy – in the finale the dialogue of destiny and the suffering hero unfolds – just as it does in the first bars of Mozart’s Piano Fantasia in C Minor and in Beethoven’s own numerous works in C Minor. It is only the second movement of the trio (Andante cantabile) that draws the listener away from this “plot” The theme, five variations and coda delight with their varied structure and playful techniques. This work has a dramaturgy of its own, of purely musical qualities: the string instruments battle for supremacy with the piano, initially without any particular hopes, but gradually more successful.

Ernest Bloch composed his Three Nocturnes for Piano, Violin and Cello in Cleveland in 1924. By that time he had been residing in the USA for eight years, and it was in 1924 that he took American citizenship. It may be possible that the cycle of nocturnes developed as a continuation of the brief poem In the Night (1922), which Bloch composed for piano and almost immediately orchestrated.
The nocturne is a romantic genre, though here Bloch’s style is closer to impressionism. In these three pieces one can see three faces of Night, moreover the character of the latter two pieces – mournful and stormy – is unequivocally underscored in the tempi designations.

The Trio in A Major In Memory of a Great Artist was Tchaikovsky’s response to the death of Nikolai Rubinstein. In March 1881 Tchaikovsky was in Nice awaiting the arrival of his friend who had come abroad for treatment. They were not, however, fated to meet again, as Rubinstein died in Paris. From December 1881 until late January 1882 Tchaikovsky worked in Rome on his one and only trio. The work was premiered at the Moscow Conservatoire on the anniversary of its founder. The musicians were Sergei Taneyev, Jan Hřímalý and Wilhelm Fitzenhagen – the very ones Tchaikovsky had wished to see as the first performers. The trio consists of two movements, unprecedentedly large and multifaceted. The first movement was written in the spirit of romantic elegies. In the reprise, its principal theme resounds very slowly, taking on funereal hues. The second movement includes eleven variations and a finale to a theme of a song which Tchaikovsky had heard in 1873 at the Sparrow Hills in Moscow (it may be possible that the variations reflect events in Rubinstein’s life). Each of the variations is unique, the third a scherzo, the sixth a waltz and the eighth – significantly revised by Taneyev with the author’s approval – a fugue. The ninth indicates the tempo Andante flebile (a “mournful andante”) while the tenth variation is in the style of a mazurka. The main theme of the first movement returns in the coda: in the last bars of the trio, Tchaikovsky transforms it into a funeral march.
Anna Bulycheva