Piano Quintet in G Minor, Opus 30
SERGEI TANEYEV
Born November 25, 1856, Vladimir
Died June 15, 1915, Dyudkovo

Sergei Taneyev was Tchaikovsky's most successful student. He studied composition with Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatory, gave the Moscow première of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in December 1875 when he was only 19, succeeded Tchaikovsky as professor of composition at the Conservatory, and remained a lifelong friend of the older composer. As a teacher at the Conservatory, Taneyev had a number of distinguished students, but-alarmed by the Conservatory's elitist standards and moved by the revolutionary sentiments in the air-Taneyev resigned from the faculty in 1905 and formed his own "People's Conservatory" in Moscow that would offer instruction even to those unable to pay. He died from the pneumonia he contracted at the funeral of one of his best students, Scriabin.

Taneyev occupies a unique position among turn-of-the-century Russian composers in that he rejected all forms of nationalistic music, whether folktunes or dance rhythms, in favor of the classical forms of Western music. Technically he was perhaps the best-equipped of any Russian composer, though some have regretted his insistence on cutting himself off from anything innately Russian in his own music. Among his compositions are four symphonies, nine quartets, three quintets, an opera, and numerous choral works.

Taneyev composed his Piano Quintet in G Minor in the years 1908-10, just after leaving the Moscow Conservatory. This is big music: its four movements stretch out over three-quarters of an hour, and Taneyev generates a huge volume of sound from these five instruments. It is also well-integrated music: it opens with a slow introduction marked mesto ("sad"), and the piano's opening figure will become the fundamental theme-shape for the entire quintet. This shape evolves into the movement's main theme when the music leaps ahead at the Allegro patetico. In this case, patetico means not "pathetic" but "expressive" or "intense," and intense this movement certainly is. The flowing second subject (also built on the opening shape) brings some calm, but it is the gigantic scope of this movement that impresses most. Taneyev's markings range from triple forte and drammaticamente to frequent admonitions to keep the music cantabile, dolce, espressivo; despite these interludes of calm, the movement drives with unremitting force through the tense G-minor cadence.

The pleasing Scherzo is much lighter, sparkling along on the piano's staccato triplets and the strings' ricochet bowing. There is unusual metric variety here: into a fundamental pulse of 6/8(2/4), Taneyev alters the meter in such ways that the same meter can feel completely different-these subtle shifts of pulse are part of the music's charm. Another part is its good spirits: Taneyev at one point marks the score con allegrezza: "with mirth." The theme-shape from the very beginning returns here in the trio and in the coda, which drives to a sudden ending.

The remarkable Largo is built around an ostinato-like theme stamped out by all five players and then repeated in some form throughout the movement. Above this, Taneyev spins out a variety of expressive music, alternating passages for strings alone with extended writing for solo piano. The movement rises to a passionato climax before falling away to the effective ending, where the ostinato theme-so powerful throughout-dissolves quietly at the close. The tumultuous finale is built on material from earlier movements-in fact, when the main theme takes wing, Taneyev marks it pateticamente. This is a dramatic movement, full-throated in its rhetoric, and it drives to an extraordinarily sonorous close.