W hen the unexpected and non-functional seventh chords of mm. 5-6 yield to the relatively stable A minor of m. 7, the significant aural affect is heightened...”
— William Hussey, MTO 2003;9(1).
T he performance last evening (of Shostakovich’s Op. 67 in E minor and Tchaikovsky’s Op. 50 in A minor) at Schloß Johannisberg by the piano trio comprised of Erik Schumann (violin), Leonard Elschenbroich (cello), and Anna Vinnitskaya (piano) was exceptionally good. These artists, each of whom is approximately 30 years old and each already with a number of competition wins and honors and awards behind them, are superbly matched to each other in terms of their musical vision or interpretive conception of each of these pieces and in terms of their playing style. That they thoroughly enjoy playing together is palpable and plain for all to see in performances like the one in the Fürst von Metternich Saal last night.
I n the last movement of the Tchaikovsky, Schumann broke a string. The music stopped, and the audience was expecting some confusion on stage—at least a 10-minute break while the string was replaced. The trio exited the stage, and we were astonished to see them return less than 3 minutes later, the violin re-strung and tuned. They took the last movement again in stride—with expressive coherence and emotional continuity as if no interruption, no catastrophe of breaking a string had taken place. Tremendous!
T he entire performance was admirable, but, for me, the poignancy of the first movement of the Shostakovich—and of the passacaglia—was especially compelling emotionally. The high-pitch harmonics in Elschenbroich’s walking figures at the beginning, with Schumann’s violin notes much lower, and Vinnitskaya’s piano in the depths below that—create a sense of profound danger and loss: as if denoting a war-time sorrow that has not fully registered with those who have experienced the loss, and as if it will take a lifetime to register it. The techniques include artificial harmonics excited at intervals other than a fourth. Different artificial harmonics can be produced by touching a perfect fifth above the stopped pitch, which sounds an octave higher than the note under the touched node. Another artificial harmonic is sounded by touching a major third above the stopped pitch, which then sounds two octaves above the lightly-touched spot on the fingerboard. Naturally, the pitches of these high-register harmonics are far less precisely controllable than ordinary stops in normal register—so the expressive effect is one of scary tight-rope walking, or great anxiety, or coping under great pressure and external constraints.
T he linear chromatic lines and their mercurial, untrustworthy melodic direction beg the questions ‘Where will the line end? Will it end?’ This cadence created by melodic contrast opposes traditional diatonic cadence mechanisms and tampers with our emotions. Hussey terms this ‘cadence by contrast’ in his analysis of the passacaglia in Shostakovich’s Op. 67, and, based on the experience of last night’s concert, we can say that when it is executed with conviction it is a really powerful rhetorical device!
T he slippery, descending chromatic bass lines in the cello and the piano erode our sense of certainty and demolish any comfort zone to which we might nostalgically have hoped to cling. This piano trio is, to me, Shostakovich in 1944 describing the conjectured future, now become our present 70-years-on fully-materialized reality. No more conjectures; no more chances to choose again.
T here are exuberant, happy figures in Op. 67, to be sure. But the overall effect of these, juxtaposed with the poignant and tenuous content, is ironical or backhanded horror-inducing. Fantastic performance; we went home with lots to absorb and think about!
- Erik Schumann website
- Leonard Elschenbroich website
- Anna Vinnitskaya website
- Rheingau Musik Festival website
- Fanning D, ed. Shostakovich Studies. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
- Kuhn J. Shostakovich in Dialogue. Ashgate, 2010.
- Sheinberg E. Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich. Ashgate, 2001.
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