The Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67, is a piece for violin, cello and piano by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, started in late 1943 and completed in August the following year. It was premiered on 14 November 1944. The piece was dedicated to his close friend Ivan Sollertinsky, whose death in February 1944 affected Shostakovich profoundly. The piece consists of four movements, with a complete performance running 25 to 27 minutes. The final movement, the "Dance of Death", is in particular notable for its characteristic use of Jewish scales. History Shostakovich began writing the trio during the December of 1943, having earlier that year in October mentioned beginning work on a piano trio "on Russian folk themes", and having written to Isaac Glikman on 8 December he was working on the trio. Several days before completing the piece's first movement, Shostakovich's good friend Ivan Sollertinsky, a Russian polymath and avid musician, died at age 41, having experienced heart pains in the preceding days. Sollertinsky's death affected Shostakovich deeply, and he decided to dedicate the trio to his friend's memory. Upon hearing of his friend's death he wrote to Sollertinsky's widow that "it is impossible to express in words all the grief that engulfed me on hearing the news about [Sollertinsky's] death", and that "to live without him will be unbearably difficult"; in the following months he suffered from periods of depression and struggled to compose, at one point writing "it seems to me that I will never be able to compose another note again". He finished writing the work later that year, completing the second movement by 4 August 1944 and the fourth by 13 August. The work received its premiere in Leningrad on 14 November 1944, with the composer at the piano alongside Dmitri Tsyganov and Sergei Shirinsky, members of the Beethoven Quartet, who gave his Second String Quartet its premiere during the same concert. Two years after premiering the work, in 1946, Shostakovich made the first recording of the work with Tsyganov and Shirinsky, and the next year, on 26 May 1947, he made a second recording with David Oistrakh and the Czech cellist Miloš Sádlo at the Prague Festival. In 1946, Shostakovich was also awarded a State Stalin Prize (second grade) for the trio. Structure The piece consists of four movements: Andante — Moderato (E minor) Allegro con brio (F-sharp major) Largo (B-flat