Anton Arensky (1861 - 1906)

Anton Stepanovich Arensky was born July 12, 1861 – was a Russian Romantic composer and music professor born in Novgorod, Russia.Arensky had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by age nine. His father and mother moved to St. Petersburg in 1879, where he studied composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, as a student of Rimsky-Korsakov. After graduation in 1882 he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students were Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Gretchaninov. In 1895 Arensky returned to St. Petersburg as director of the Imperial Choir, having been recommended by Balakirev. He retired in 1901, spending his time as a pianist, conductor, and composer.Arensky died of tuberculosis in a Finnish sanatorium in 1906. It is alleged that drinking and gambling undermined his health.

Rimsky-Korsakov predicted oblivion for Arensky, and he just about had it right. Excepting the first piano trio, people have forgotten Arensky's music. I've heard several works by Arensky, and I think the chances slim we will discover either a neglected Brahms or a neglected Rimsky, for that matter. Nevertheless, we listen to all kinds of music for all kinds of reasons, and not everything need give us a vision of heaven.

The trios, I believe, show Arensky at his attractive best, for the music is indeed attractive. The first especially shows off a genuine lyrical gift. The themes in fact are the work's main strength, with a Slavic melancholy cast to some of them and, oddly enough, a Mendelssohnian reminiscence to others (the Scherzo especially). If I had to guess when Arensky composed this work, I would have guessed around 1860, one year in fact before the composer was born. There's almost no hint that Arensky has heard Wagner or Brahms or Liszt, and perhaps he hadn't. Yet, he should have gleaned something from the Five and from Tchaikovsky, the latter supposedly a great influence on him - perhaps so, in the way Russian folk influence on his themes has been sublimated. Still, you listen in vain for harmonic daring or structural genius. Development is often a matter of mere sequence, there's far too much reliance on "call and response" between violin and cello, and the distribution of musical interest never really varies. Instead of (to me) a chamber ideal of a colloquy of equals, Arensky relies on melody-basic accompaniment-figuration. Further, basic accompaniment he almost always gives to the piano. To some extent, it reminds me Saint-Saëns's chamber music, but not nearly as interesting. The slow movement stands apart from the schoolboy development and dilettantish textures of the rest. Here, Arensky seems free and does what he apparently wants: to sing. He lays down a melody and follows it with increasing fervor, mining it for maximum expressivity.