Dr. Bob Prescribes: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor (1944)

In my Dr. Bob Prescribes post of June 6, 2023, on Martha Argerich, I recommended an album containing two piano trios: Pyotr Tchaikovsky one-and-only piano trio of 1882, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s second piano trio, in E minor of 1944, as performed by Martha Argerich, piano; Gidon Kremer, violin; and Mischa Maisky, cello.

In that post, I observed that Ms. Argerich (born 1941) has long been associated with the violinist Gidon Kremer (born 1947) and the cellist Mischa Maisky (born 1948). Their album containing live performances of Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s Trio in A minor, Op. 50 is superb. I opined that as musical compositions go, Tchaikovsky’s trio is wonderful, but Shostakovich’s is a world-class masterpiece, a bristling gut-wrenching chef-d’oeuvre. I then promised that I would write about Shostakovich’s Piano Trio in E minor as soon as possible, and here we are, two weeks later, ready to go.

Who says I don’t keep my promises?

Shostakovich’s trio, composed in 1944, was a product of the war years and, in many ways, a product of the war itself. As such, some necessary historical background is called for. So bear with me, as we address – by necessity – something of Shostakovich’s wartime experience.

Deep Background: With Friends Like These . . .

On August 23, 1939, the Joseph Stalin’s Soviet government signed a pact of nonaggression and friendship with Hitler’s Germany.

His eastern flank thus secure, Hitler was free to begin his war of expansion on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Two days later – on September 3 – Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. And thus began the European phase of the Second World War. (For our information, the Asian phase of World War Two began in 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria.)

The “friendship” pact between Hitler and Stalin stunned the world. Historically, Russia and Germany – the two great continental powers of Europe – had never trusted each other. And now, in 1939, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler – two of the most militant, psychotic sociopaths in history, representing the two most oppositional ideologies of the twentieth century – had figuratively shoved their tongues down each other’s gullets, allowing Hitler to begin a war that would bring European civilization to the brink of collapse.…

On Sunday, June 22, 1941, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906-1975) had a hot date: he and his pal Isaac Glikman (1911-2003) planned to attend a soccer match double-header (Dynamo versus Zenith) and then go out to dinner. Sadly, none of it ever took place. On their way to the stadium, they heard the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov’s radio broadcast announcing the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin – who had been receiving solid intelligence about the impending Nazi invasion for months – was stunned; rendered virtually speechless. The great Russian writer and patriot Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) later observed :

“Not to trust anybody was typical of Stalin. All the years of his life did he trust one man, and that was Adolf Hitler.”

…

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