Piano Trio

"The Trio for violin, cello and piano (1992), which was first performed at the Evian Festival on 25th May 1993, is an arrangement of the String Trio composed seven years earlier in response to a commission from the Alban Berg Society (to commemorate the composer's centenary). In the new version the composer departs from the homogeneous, almost orchestral string sound and makes the inner structures of the work clear in a new musical analysis.
In the Trio, a reminiscence-filled work with echoes of Vienna, there are hints of Schubert, Mahler and the expressive language of Alban Berg. During the clearly- defined course of the work, a terse thematic motif is varied, combined polyphonically, harmonically modified and alienated. Alongside this, there are passages with toccata-like, sweeping broken chords, funeral-march-like themes or a meditative pesante theme similar to that which was to be used two years later in the ballet Peer Gynt.
The proximity to Berg becomes plain in several respects: in the aphoristic concision, in the principle of variation and in the melodic construction. Schnittke follows his own path in the tense questioning of his musical material on different stylistic levels. Despite this abundance of facets, however, the work forms a surprising synthesis of polystylistic methods.
Schnittke dedicated the Piano Trio to his wife (the Pianist Irina Schnittke) and to his two old friends Mstislav Rostropovich and Mark Lubotsky." (Jürgen Köchel)