Much is made of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1, his graduation piece, written when the composer was eighteen. Much should be. But how about his slightly earlier Piano Trio No. 1, written when he was seventeen? Not bad (at all).
This trio was performed at Zankel Hall on Saturday night by the trio of Janine Jansen (violin), Torleif Thedéen (cello), and Alexander Gavrylyuk (piano).
The piece certainly sounds like Shostakovich—the Shostakovich the world would come to love, or at least be astounded by, in future decades. But I have to note something funny.
At the end of the piece, Shostakovich has the pianist play a vigorous, extended tremolo. Many years ago, I wrote critically of Liszt, calling him something like “the master of the tremolo and other vulgar gestures.” My colleague Mike Potemra got a huge kick out of this. He brings up that phrase—“the tremolo and other vulgar gestures”—from time to time.
Our players on Saturday night did well by the youthful trio—including the tremolo, which is only slightly vulgar. Jansen was precise, subtle, and alive, as usual. Thedéen did some handsome singing—some beautiful singing—on his cello.
Another “seventeen-year-old” work, so to speak—a work written when the composer was seventeen—is Bizet’s Symphony in C. It will never leave the repertoire.
But when it comes to youthful works, probably nothing can top Mendelssohn’s Octet, written when he was sixteen. A genius, Felix Mendelssohn. They say he never lived up to his promise. Okay—but what promise, and what living!
The violin has a huge repertoire, as you know, but violinists are a greedy lot, so when Prokofiev wrote his Sonata in D for Flute—an instrument that does not have a huge repertoire—violinists, in the person of David Oistrakh, wanted to poach it. Obligingly, the composer arranged it for violin. And we heard it from Jansen and Gavrylyuk on Saturday night.
I think of the first movement—and even the sonata at large—as rather Classical (like Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, which is, in fact, nicknamed “the Classical”). From the duo in Zankel Hall, it was big and Romantic. Is this wrong? No—it is one conception of the music.
The second movement, Presto, could have been crisper, and Jansen did some uncharacteristic scratching. (Deliberate?) Yet there was no denying the spiritedness with which the two played. The next movement, Andante, was a simple song—a simple song in F—as it should be. And the final movement was utterly compelling.
Among Jansen’s powers, I think, is that of concentration. She has a musical idea, or ideas, and won’t let them go. She is like a freight train—an elegant, subtle, flexible freight train—that cannot be moved off its (intelligent) course.
What the hell, she’s a great musician.
Before I go, one more word on poaching. Brahms wrote two clarinet sonatas. In this very hall—Zankel—I heard Emmanuel Pahud and Yefim Bronfman play them in flute transcriptions. So, the flute takes a little revenge, if not on violinists then on clarinetists. And those transcriptions worked, too, certainly in those masterly hands.