Rachmaninoff : Trios avec piano n°1 et n°2 - Trio Kobalt

Description

Serge Rachmaninoff’s Piano Trios No. 1 and No. 2 highlight two works in which the piano forms the dramatic axis rather than a mere accompaniment. The First Trio, conceived in a single movement, engages in dialogue with the Pezzo elegiaco from Tchaïkovski’s Trio Op. 50 and, in retrograde filigree, hints at an echo of the opening call of Concerto Op. 23. The Second Trio was born of Tchaïkovski’s mourning and takes up the dedication “to the memory of a great artist”: a vast architecture unfolding between sonata form, large-scale theme and variations, and a cyclical conclusion. Revised several times by the composer, the score is presented here in the late 1917 version, with the ad libitum repeats omitted in order to preserve the continuity of the discourse. In both works, the elegiac and funereal mode is nourished by the oscillation between major and minor, a true theater of successive shadows.