Vich Perfect Photo: Chamber Music New Zealand
The members of Vich Perfect are all from St Andrew's College in Christchurch: Grace Lawrence (violin), Christine Jeon (cello), and Samuel Jeon (piano).
Shostakovich’s second piano trio, composed in 1944, was begun days after the unexpected death of his close friend and mentor, the musicologist, music critic and artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic Ivan Sollertinsky (1902-1944). He’d died suddenly from a heart attack, while in evacuation in Siberia with the Leningrad Philharmonic, for whom he was artistic director. Sollertinsky was just forty-one years old.
Shostakovich credited his entire development and education to Sollertinsky and struggled to imagine life without him. Outside events were equally bleak, as Russians struggled against a long German occupation.
The last movement is an agitated dance. A Jewish tune, ever more frenzied, is allegedly a response to the horror of the concentration camps.
Ian MacDonald, writing in The New Shostakovich, says that “horrified by stories that SS guards had made their victims dance beside their own graves, Shostakovich created a directly programmatic image it of it.” Although Shostakovich wasn’t Jewish, he felt a strong affinity with what he considered the most persecuted people of Europe.
Vich Perfect honestly can’t say that they ‘like the piece’, but that’s not to say that they weren’t drawn to it, or even completely engrossed by it. This piano trio certainly isn’t an easy listen or easy to perform.
Vich Perfect won the Platinum Award at the 2021 NZCT Chamber Music Contest with this performance.
Recorded 7 August 2021 at The Piano, Christchurch by RNZ Concert
Producer/Sound engineer: Darryl Stack
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