Andante – Moderato

The first movement, in E minor, begins with a haunting passage in the cello, which plays exclusively harmonics. It is joined by the violin and then the piano, all three instruments playing in canon, with the violin entering a 13th below the cello and the piano a 13th below the violin.^[19] This slow first section of the movement undergoes development before the music moves into the faster "Moderato" section, which is in sonata form. The melodic and rhythmic features of this section's first and second themes are in essence based upon motifs introduced in the opening,^[20] and are played alongside an rhythmic "eighth-note pulsation", an accompaniment which returns in the piece's fourth movement.^[21] The movement comes to a head in the climactic recapitulation, before the music recedes in the final bars, closing quietly. Throughout the movement, G major, the relative major key, serves, in a conventional manner, as the key of the second theme of the "Moderato"; however, the keys of B-flat major and B-flat minor, a tritone from the tonic, also play a particularly notable role in the movement's modulations, with there being multiple occurrences of tonicizations from these keys.^[20] According to conductor and author Michael Mishra, this movement shows Shostakovich in a "neoclassical vein", containing melodies "almost Haydnesque in character", and with the slow introduction to a faster movement being "a nod in the direction of the Classicists".^[20]

Allegro con brio

The second movement, in F-sharp major, is a frenzied, sardonic scherzo which moves relentlessly through dissonant figurations, never resting. The movement's trio section, in G major, is a "giddy waltz",^[22] and is less separate from the rest of the movement than is usual for Shostakovich.^[18] Sollertinsky's sister considered the movement to be "an amazingly exact portrait" of her brother, whom she said Shostakovich "understood like no one else".^[23][16] It also bears similarities to the scherzo movement from his Piano Quintet.^[24]

Largo

The third movement, in B-flat minor, is a lugubrious passacaglia, based around a repeating eight-bar theme of sustained semibreve chords in the piano, tonally unstable in character.^[25] Against this background, the violin and cello, playing in canon, trade off dark, slow, and somber melodic lines. The movement ends with an attacca marking, continuing into the next movement without a pause.^[21] In 1975, after Shostakovich's death, this movement was played at his public funeral service held in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, as thousands passed his coffin.^[26][22]

Allegretto – Adagio

The piece's fourth and final movement begins in E major and transitions to E minor. Staccato repeated notes begin this "Dance of Death" movement, which introduces a Jewish-style melody, and revisits the thematic content of the previous three movements. It ends in a tortured E major chord, almost inaudibly.

The Jewish melody from this last movement was quoted in Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8.^[27]

Ian MacDonald says in his book The New Shostakovich that the movement was inspired by the composer's horror at reports that SS guards in Nazi death camps had forced Jews to dance by their own graves.^[22][28]