Two trios by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75), the towering giant of Soviet music, and the trio by his friend and admirer, Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-96), poignantly convey the life experience of these two composers. Inscape, a term coined by the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, refers to an object’s essential character, its unique inner nature. The works collected here provide access to such essential, inner landscapes. Both composers’ music speaks in such a way that one senses an emotional soundscape, unique but dynamic. Born in Poland to a Jewish family, Mieczyslaw Weinberg (or Moyses Vaynberg) entered the conservatory at age 12. Graduating in 1939 just ahead of Hitler’s invading army, he fled to Minsk, capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic, where Weinberg was encouraged to develop a ”Jewish“ national style. When the Nazis invaded Soviet territory, Weinberg fled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1943, Weinberg sent his first symphony to Shostakovich, who was impressed enough to arrange for Weinberg to move to Moscow where they very much remained a part of each other’s lives and music-making. Weinberg completed his Trio (op. 24) in 1943. This wartime masterpiece encompasses a range of expression reflecting the emotional essence of this Jewish refugee, now a citizen of the Soviet Union. The Prelude’s majestic melody, buttressed by resounding strings, heralds a monumental journey. After the Prelude, the strings bridge to a sweet theme over an easeful piano, and the piano answers with a minor, faint version of the theme. The brusque Toccata erupts in the piano, detached and aggressive. This percussive toccata becomes more regular as the violin sings an inflected, Jewish melody leading the primitive drive in the piano to frenzied exuberance. The Poem is a pearl of expansive lyricism. A rhapsodic piano spins an improvisatory melody, and the material builds to a climax of hammered piano and wildly trilling strings. The melody of the introduction returns and the rhapsody closes the work. Unfurling a melody filled with inquiry, the Finale starts with the violin introducing a rapid motive which soon sings a soaring variation of the piano’s opening. The cello responds with a warmer rendition before the violin interrupts again. A fugal section follows, building to a climax interrupted by music from the trio’s Prelude. The finale’s opening theme returns in a dreamy rendition, finishing with a conversation between all instruments, subsiding as the piano tolls with quiet resolve. A chorale of religious intensity in the piano provides a moment of reflection, as the strings join the piano with their concluding thoughts. Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 1 (op. 8, 1923) was written when the young composer was 17. Composition began in late summer 1923 while Shostakovich was convalescing in Crimea, where he fell in love with Tatyana Glivenko (the trio’s dedicatee). It remained unpublished until after the composer’s death, and for all its sentiment and romantic spirit, it is a taut, fresh composition. The sighing cello melody over a gently pulsating piano is the heart of the work’s thematic material. As the piano introduces chromatic gestures spaced over octaves, spinning into a playful melody, the material builds in emotional intensity and breaks off, time and again. After a sweeping passionate interlude, the music breaks off one last time as the cello restates the main theme over a rocking minor chord. The rocking awakens in the Andante as background for a tender cello love song. This section explores both the sweetness and the tempestuousness latent in the melody. Returning to the variation of the opening, Shostakovich takes us through a mosaic from the work culminating in a rapturous rendition of the love song. Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 (op. 67) composed in 1944 shows Shostakovich’s skill at plumbing emotional vistas of harrowing intensity. The trio was composed under the cloud of tragedy: his beloved friend, musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, died while composition was underway. Further darkening the mood, word had reached Moscow of the Nazi concentration camps, likely accounting for the inclusion of Jewish music in the final movement. The Andante is dominated by sorrow, made more intense by unworldly sonorities. The canonic introduction begins with a thin melodic thread in high cello harmonics, followed by the muted violin tracing the emotionally charged melody. In contrast to the astral register of the strings, the piano enters with deep octaves providing immense gravity. The violin introduces a sweet tune from which emerges a descending motive, becoming an ironic down-bow gesture. The development builds to a climax from which soars the second theme high above an imploring piano which grows into a jubilant celebration of E major, but the music subsides uneasily with glassy E minor string chords over an insistent, nervous piano. In bold contrast, the second movement launches into a grotesque waltz of the sort well known in Shostakovich. The boisterous melody unleashes a raucous stomping and whirling dance: when the tune repeats, a swooping, somewhat taunting gesture appears as emotional counterpoint to the grotesque. Time stops in the third movement. With a profound sense of longing in this movement, chords in the piano lay the harmonic foundation for a chilling passacaglia. A lyrical song of Mahlerian compass is passed between violin and cello. As if out of nowhere, the violin plucks a curious motive in the guise of a “Jewish” dance. The minor inflection of the popular Jewish music appealed to Shostakovich, who was probably inspired by Weinberg. Shostakovich once said of the Jewish musical spirit, “a cheerful melody is built here on sad intonations… Why does he sing a cheerful song? Because he is sad at heart.” In the fourth movement, music fluctuates between wild swagger and playful dance, at times with an ominous tinge. As the dance subsides, the strings articulate a hesitant version of the work’s stark opening. The granite chords of the Largo return while the violin and cello soar above in high harmonics. The violin, then cello, declare a gently defiant restatement of the Jewish theme, coming to rest on a peaceful E major. —Program notes by David Berg