Trio No. 2

Dedication: "To the memory of I. I. Sollertinsky".
Duration: 25’.
First Performance: November 14, 1944. Leningrad. Great Hall of the Philharmonia.
In Moscow - November 28, 1944 with the same musicians: D. Tsyganov, S. Shirinsky and the composer.

"Our common acquaintances used to say that he knows all languages which exist now and existed before on this planet, that he has studied all branches of science, that he knew by heart the whole of Shakespeare, Pushkin, Gogol, Aristotle and Plato, that he knows...in short that he knows everything. I couldn't help feeling that this must be an extraordinary man, that it would be difficult and awkward for an ordinary, average individual to be with him. When in 1921 one of my friends introduced me to Sollertinsky I quickly withdrew into my shell, because I felt that it would be very difficult for me to keep up an acquaintance with such an extraordinary man...
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Finally, in 1927, I met him while visiting a Leningrad musician...I was very struck to observe that Sollertinsky turned out to be an unusually jovial and unaffected person, a brilliant wit and very much down-to-earth. Once more I came to realize that a truly great man is always unaffected, always modest and always has his feet firmly on the ground. Our hospitable host kept  on his guests for a long time and in the end Sollertinsky and I went home on foot. We lived close to each other in Leningrad and had to go in the same direction. The long distance seemed very short, because the walk with Sollertinsky was so relaxed: he was talking so interestingly
about so many aspects of life and art."

D. Shostakovich. "Reminiscences about I. I. Sollertinsky" in the collection: "Musical Contemporaries", "Sovietskii kompozitor" Publishers, Moscow, 1973

Trio No. 2
Op. 67

     Shostakovich began working on Trio No. 2, Op. 67 no later than December 1943.
     On 11 February, music critic Ivan Sollertinsky died prematurely in Novosibirsk. Shostakovich apparently found out about this on 13 February. ‘Please accept my deepest condolences regarding the death of our closest and dear friend...,’ he wrote that day to Glikman. ‘We will never see him again. I cannot find the words to express the harrowing grief and distress that fills my whole being. Let our love for him and faith in his brilliant talent and phenomenal love for the art form—music—to which he devoted his magnificent life eternalise his memory. Ivan is no more. This is something very hard to accept.’ Subsequently, Trio No. 2 was dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky.
     On 15 February 1944, as the date on the fair copy of the author’s manuscript testifies, the first movement of Trio was completed,21 but then the work was put on hold for a long time. The reasons for the halt in work were illness, on the one hand, and the deep psychological trauma caused by the death of his friend, on the other.
     Shostakovich probably did not return to the manuscript of Trio until at least the end of July, in Ivanovo. The rough draft of the second movement was dated 3 August, and the fair copy of the author’s manuscript 4 August with the inscription ‘Ivanovo’. So it is thought that all the movements of Trio, Op. 67, apart from the first, were composed in Ivanovo.
     On 25 September, the composer performed Trio  for the first time at home for D. Tsyganov and S. Shirinsky, and they began rehearsing.
     On 25 October, information appeared in Pravda about Shostakovich’s new chamber works, Quartet No. 2 and Trio. On 1 November, a hearing of Trio was held at the Art Affairs Committee, and on the same day Vechernyaya Moskva reported on the upcoming premiere.
     On 4 November, Trio was performed with the same musicians at an evening dedicated to the anniversary of the October Revolution in the Soviet Information Bureau.
     On 9 November 1944, Trio was performed at the Union of Composers.
     On 14 November, the official premiere was held in Leningrad in the Grand Hall of the Philharmonic. An encore of the second movement of Trio was performed.
     In 1946, Shostakovich was awarded a State Stalin Prize, 2nd degree for Trio No. 2.