Glinka: Trio Pathétique
Yan Liu, clarinet
Doron Laznow, bassoon
Bolai Cao, piano
Performed on Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia
0:00 Allegro moderato
5:00 Scherzo—Trio
8:15 Largo
13:30 Allegro con spirito
Mikhail Glinka was a trailblazer for Russian nationalist music. As the first composer to incorporate his country’s folk melodies into his works, he set the course for Russian music and inspired a prolific generation of composers—including Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Cui, and Balakirev (collectively known as The Mighty Five)—who would follow him.
Despite Glinka’s stature as a specifically Russian composer, his Trio Pathéthique is “not so easily recognizable as a work by the ‘Father of Russian Music,’” according to the music critic Denby Richards. This is perhaps because Glinka wrote it as a 28-year-old, when he was still a student of composition in Milan. While in Italy he fell under the influence of such quintessentially Italian composers as Donizetti and Bellini; consequently, this trio has a distinctively sunny Italian flavor. Still, Glinka couldn’t quite shake his own darkly Romantic spirit: despite the mood of the piece, he inscribed on its manuscript, “I have known love only through the pain it brings.”
