Beaux Arts Trio plays Schubert and Shostakovich

Schubert yes, Shostakovich not quite

TOM PURDOM

The Beaux Arts Trio opened its Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concert with two pieces that have striking beginnings. The opening of Schubert’s Notturno did everything it’s supposed to; the opening of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio didn’t.

For the first moments of the Schubert, the violin and the cello delivered delicate harmonies and subtle shadings coupled with an evocative, insinuating response from the piano. It was a somber, scene-painting beginning, as it should be, and the burst of passion in the middle of Schubert’s one-movement classic varied the mood without destroying it.

Shostakovich created one of the most striking leads in the repertoire when he wrote his Second Piano Trio. The cello opens the trio with a high, thin melody played at the extreme limits of its range, and the violin comes in under it, in the darker sector of the violin’s territory. Properly played, it’s just as somber as the opening of the Schubert and it sounds, in addition, like the first phrases of an important story. Shostakovich wrote the trio in memory of a friend who had just died, and there is some evidence that he was influenced, while he was composing it, by the first reports of Nazi atrocities against the Russian Jews.

When a trio flubs Shostakovich’s opening, it usually happens because the cellist couldn’t shape the high notes into a melody. I’m told it’s one of the most difficult passages in the cello repertoire. The Beaux produced a flawless rendition of the melodies, but the somberness eluded them. Their version merely sounded whispery and distant.

Schubert, on the other hand….

They obviously understand Schubert. The evening ended with a performance of Schubert’s B Flat Major piano trio that had all the effects it should have. The slow movement was achingly longing, the finale was sprightly where it should be sprightly and lyrical where it’s supposed to be lyrical. The people who came to hear Schubert got everything they were looking for.

The program included a short piece by a popular contemporary British composer, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and the Beaux had no problems with that item either. A Slow Pavane contains some of the somberness of the Notturno and the Second Piano Trio, but it’s more robust than the Schubert. It changes moods in a flash, like the Shostakovich, but the trio understood the moods it was manipulating.

I couldn’t complain either about the elegiac slow movement of the Shostakovich-- the part in which it sounds most like Schubert. The fast movements, on the other hand, merely sounded noisy and catchy.

Nazis dancing on their victims’ graves?

Some commentators claim the second movement depicts the Nazis dancing on the graves of their victims. That may or may not be true, but it suggests the kind of tragic irony you should hear when you listen to the Second Trio’s frenzied allegros.

I’ve heard the Shostakovich live about six times. In almost every case, the audience was overwhelmed by it. The Beaux Arts received a solid round of applause, but nobody stood up. I even saw people looking restless during the fast movements.

I usually ignore theories that link a composer’s music to his biography. (Raggenveld’s anguish over the death of his parakeet colors the minuet movement with hidden pain.) Shostakovich is the great exception.

Shostakovich occupied a prominent, highly visible position in a society dominated by the tragedies of war and the whims of a capricious tyrant. You can’t play his music if you can’t work your way into the tensions that harry a creative artist trapped in that situation. The Beaux Arts made a good try, but their natural habitat is Schubert’s world, not Stalin’s.