Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Bearing the inscription "To the memory of a great artist," this trio was dedicated to the recently deceased pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, with whom Tchaikovsky had maintained a difficult friendship. Fittingly, the trio's piano part is quite challenging and often overwhelms the material for violin and cello. Tchaikovsky was not much of a pianist and never realized how difficult his keyboard music could be.

The first movement, "Pezzo elegiaco" (elegiac piece), opens with an expansive motto that will recur throughout the work; the intense, soulful theme is introduced by the cello over a stewing piano accompaniment. The theme then is taken by the violin, soon rejoined in counterpoint by the cello. At length, the piano makes its own statement of the theme. The motto is subsequently fragmented and glued back together with fresh material of a striving, Russian nature. More important new material enters floridly in the piano, offering a slightly brighter outlook but with no less fervor. All this is developed in Tchaikovsky's standard manner, relying on obsessive repetition of thematic elements rather than real transformation of them, although one section offers an extended nostalgic reverie for the strings. The recapitulation is a verbatim repetition of the exposition, except that a second little development section is appended near the end.

The second movement consists of a theme followed by eleven variations. The piano states the theme, an appealingly naive folk-like tune, and it is then picked up by the strings. The variations are said to have recalled unspecified scenes from Rubinstein's life; they constitute a series of genre pieces that sometimes freely depart from the theme, although the first variation is essentially a restatement of the theme by the strings. In the second variation, the cello plays the melody again, over nimble counterpoint from the violin and piano. The third is a scherzo for piano, with pizzicato accompaniment. The fourth is a soulful, highly Slavic treatment. In the fifth, the piano evokes a music box or possibly sleigh bells. Sixth comes a light but lengthy waltz, initially led by the cello, although the piano aggressively cuts in at the middle. The seventh variation keeps the theme at home in the piano, while the strings take meandering excursions. The eighth variation is a big, gruff fugue; the ninth, in sharp contrast, is a slow meditation full of gloomy arpeggios. Cheer returns with the tenth variation, a playful mazurka. The eleventh variation actually constitutes the final movement. It is in strict sonata form, and takes off from a treatment of the melody that owes much to the last of Schumann's Symphonic Etudes (which Tchaikovsky had orchestrated as a student). All the motifs in this movement are, one way or another, derived from the same theme until the extended coda, where the motto from the first movement bursts onto the scene and carries the trio to a despairing conclusion.