BBC Music Magazine

Piano Trio No. 2 Dmitri Shostakovich

The work

After completing his Eighth Symphony during the height of the Second World War, Shostakovich turned his thoughts towards a Piano Trio. He had already composed one such work early in his career, but it remained unpublished in his lifetime. This new composition, however, which occupied him from December 1943 to August of the following year, turned out to be rather different from his first effort and was conceived on a grander scale.

The Trio opens with one of the most original gestures in the entire chamber repertoire

It’s a work that reflects not only the tragic circumstances of the period in which it was written, but also mourns the loss of the brilliant musicologist Ivan

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