Erkki Melartin (1875-1937) was born in the Finnish town of Käkisalmi. He studied with Martin Wegelius in Helsinki and then in Vienna with Robert Fuchs. He pursued a career as a composer, conductor and teacher, serving as the director of the Helsinki Conservatory. He was a prolific composer who wrote in most genres. His music shows the influence of Mahler and is primarily written in the late, post-Brahmsian idiom. He did not ignore chamber music and composed a piano quintet, a string quintet, four string quartets, a string trio and several short works for piano trio. Unfortunately, most of these have remained languishing in manuscript form in libraries and have not been published. His String Trio in a minor was completed in 1926. It has never been published to the best of our knowledge. The manuscript of the score resides in the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. We had the string parts made by Olavi Virtanen, a professional Finnish music copyist from the manuscript.
The trio is very different from his string quartets which were composed 2 decades earlier. Although this is certainly a tonal work, the tonalities are more austere. And it certainly does not sound like the work of a young man but rather an older one. In parts, one hears a kind world-weary mood. The quartets were written during the last years of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, which was an exciting time and before the First World War. After the war, the mood throughout Europe as a whole was very different. And also the ideas of the Second Vienna School were starting to gain traction.
The first movement opens with an Andante introduction. The sad, almost downtrodden theme, is repeated as a kind of echo. The main section, Allegro, is by turns filled with nervous energy and solemnity which is punctuated briefly by lyricism that seems to come from folk melody. And there are occasional bursts of dramatic and powerful march-like sections as well. There is an almost constant sense of frenetic unrest. The opening theme, heard in the introduction, returns several times. As the title to the second movement, Andante funebre, suggests, this is not happy music. Though by no means a dirge, it is nonetheless quite suitable for a funeral and is interspersed, here and there, with brief moments of jarring dissonance. Third comes an ascerbic, whirling Presto. It starts off almost in atonal fashion. The music is dominated by its rhythm, there certainly is not any real melody. But the trio section, which provides a very stark contrast, is a lovely pizzicato affair. The finale, Vivace, starts off as if it were a continuation of the Presto but is quickly interrupted by a much slower, quasi oriental sounding subject. The Vivace then returns and its restless energy is akin to traveling music, full of forward drive, always pushing ahead.
This is a modern masterwork for string trio. It is hard to understand how it never received publication. Certainly not a work for beginners, this is a trio which undoubtedly belongs in the concert hall where it will be sure to make a lasting impression
