Sofia Levchenko - violin
Sandro Sidamonidze - cello
Dmitri Kristalinsky - piano

Performed at Martin Luther Chapel, East Lansing MI, USA
December 12, 2018

The composition was dedicated to Shostakovich's good friend, Ivan Sollertinsky, a Russian polymath and avid musician, who had recently died at the age of 41.

0:00 Andante
Highly dissonant, it begins with an extremely difficult passage in the cello, all harmonics. The rest of the movement starts with canonic material, but then develops into a sonata form, requiring incredible amounts of technical prowess from all three instruments

7:31 Allegro con brio
A frenzied dance that never finds a settling place

10:31 Largo
Against a repeated background of piano chords, the violin and cello trade off dark, slow, and somber melodic lines. It fades into the last movement with hardly a break.

16:21 Allegretto
Staccato repeated notes begin this "Dance of Death" movement, which introduces a Jewish-style melody, and revisits the thematic content of the previous three movements. It ends in a tortured E Major chord, almost inaudibly.

The Jewish melody from the last movement was quoted in Shostakovich's famous String Quartet No. 8.

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