Anton Arensky (1861-1906)
Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32 (1894)
Anton Arensky was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor of the late Romantic period who, for context, was a generation younger than Tchaikovsky and a generation older than Stravinsky. A child of musical parents, he attended the St. Petersburg conservatory studying under Rimsky-Korsakov among others. He became a professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Moscow conservatory where his own students included Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. In Moscow, Arensky befriended Tchaikovsky who would exert a noticeable influence on Arensky’s style. A subsequent appointment at the Imperial Chapel resulted in pension that enabled Arensky the freedom to pursue composing and a successful touring career as both pianist and conductor. Apparently burdened by an addiction to alcohol and gambling, Arensky died of "dissolution" at the relatively young age of 44. His musical legacy chiefly comprises at least one successful opera, 2 symphonies, 2 concerti, choral and piano works and an admirable cache of chamber music works. One occasionally hears his fine string quartet with 2 cellos but his unquestionable “greatest hit” is the popular Piano Trio No. 1 in d minor.
It was Arensky’s mentor Tchaikovsky who established an influential tradition of Russian elegies for piano trio with his monumental trio of 1882 dedicated to the celebrated pianist and co-founder of the Moscow Conservatory, Nikolai Rubinstein. Upon the death of Tchaikovsky a decade later, a young student named Serge Rachmaninoff composed his second Trio élégiaque in his honor. The following year, Arensky composed his trio to the (belated) memory of the celebrated Russian cellist Karl Davidoff who died in 1889. One might also look as far forward as 1944 when Shostakovich dedicated his second piano trio to the Russian musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky. Each of these trios is strongly marked by the presence of a dark elegy: sorrowful and even funeral music in honor of the dead.
The romantic character and technique of Arensky’s trio suggests the influence of Schumann and especially Mendelssohn whose trio in D Minor immediately comes to mind. As with Mendelssohn, Arensky’s first movement features finely articulated lyrical themes, an intricate, full texture and a steady, flowing momentum. The cello introduces nearly every theme throughout the entire trio in what would appear to be a direct tribute to Davidoff. Despite its “softening” from its initial minor key into the relative major, the first movement ends in definite sorrow as the first theme’s main motif rises in a chaste, plaintiff premonition of the third movement elegy to come. Far from the French Menuet or even a muscular scherzo alla Beethoven, the second movement is a waltz glittering with elegance, theatrical poise and, in the trio, genial and melodious warmth. To begin, a delicate, almost whimsical gesture from the violin is answered by a torrent of notes from the piano, a wonderfully theatrical call and response. Pizzicato, unresolved arabesques and the sparkling high register of the piano create a charmed atmospheric introduction promising great expectations until, finally, the cello begins the dance soon engaging its violin partner.
The stunning third movement Elegia is the heart and soul of the trio, its raison d'être. The piano intones the grave, iconic rhythm of the funeral march as a muted cello sings its sorrowful first theme. Both violin and cello are muted giving the music a hushed, almost unspeakable poignancy like grief stuck in one’s throat. But equally characteristic of most musical elegies is a second theme, bright, hopeful and nostalgic as a memory of happier times. Gentle, spacious and with ever upward reaching modulations, the music is literally uplifting culminating in the soaring heights of the violin. This is a particularly magical movement of the trio that will recur again, briefly, in the finale. The more tumultuous character again suggesting Schumann or even Brahms pervades finale with a stormy bravado as a rondo refrain juxtaposed with contrasting episodes that literally and figuratively operate as memories. One is a recall of the luminous “nostalgia” theme of the Elegia whose rising modulations that are ultimately grounded by a recall of the original first movement theme, familiar but weary with sadness and suddenly swept away forever by a final gust of fate.
