Dmitri

"An excellent master of his craft" (M. Harras). For four decades, bass-baritone Klaus Mertens has been acclaimed by critics in concerts and nearly 200 album recordings as "unearthly radiant" (klassik com), "wonderfully slender, clearly delineating" (mdr Figaro) and "unchanged fresh and immensely homogeneous" (klassik com) for his interpretations of music ranging from early to avant-garde. Dmitri Grigoriev was born in 1979 in Leningrad and studied organ and piano after private lessons at the conservatories in St. Petersburg and Kazan, where he completed his studies in 2007 with the state concert exam. The two musicians play music from "three centuries" on this album. Cantor Dmitri Grigoriev and Klaus Mertens deliberately chose a program for this project that, on the one hand, takes into account the diverse colors and possibilities of the so special organ on site, and on the other hand, is able to provide a small but subtle insight into sounds and styles of vocal music over three centuries.

To celebrate the 100th birthday of the great Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich, Mariss Jansons assembled eight of the world's finest orchestras to determine which is the best of his 15 symphonies. There is no doubt that Jansons is the man for the job. Trained under Mravinsky and long steeped in Shostakovich's music, Jansons brings a lifetimes' love and intimacy to his interpretations - not to mention a terrific baton technique and an unfailing sense of tempo.

Schnittke's Piano Quintet, a creative response to his mother's death, is an austere, haunting work full of grief and tenderness that marks one of his early ventures into polystylistic writing. The opening piano solo is unique, a spare statement of puzzlement in the face of tragedy. It gives way to a waltz, as if recapturing a lost past, then the graceful dance melody literally disintegrates as the strings venture off into other regions, vainly trying to reassemble the theme and failing. At the end of its touching five movements the music's despair is transformed into serene, hard-won acceptance. Shostakovitch's 15th Quartet, his final statement in that form, premiered just months before his death. It's six slow movements are shot through with contemplative sadness and regret. The music is so rich in texture and substance that attention never flags.

Icelandic music of the last half century is the focus of this recording by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, led by its conductor, Graham Ross. Born from his close collaboration with the native composers of the “Land of Fire and Ice,” this programme sets out to explore and highlight their hypnotic soundworld, instinctively leaning towards contemplation. A prime example is the touchingly beautiful Requiem by Sigurður Sævarsson, which here receives its world premiere recording.

This current recording follows on from the previous one by Mūza Rubackytė (Ligia, Lidi 0103351), dedicated to piano works by Godowsky (Sonata in E Minor) and Szymanowsky (9 Preludes Opus 1), which received unanimous critical acclaim.

Few new pieces of music in the 20th century have received the kind of celebrity accorded the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 when it arrived in America. At a time when Russia was seen in a somewhat friendly light by the allied nations, this supposed depiction of the siege of Leningrad was seized upon by the press as a vital cog in the war effort. The composer, clad in military fireman's garb, graced the cover of Time magazine, and Toscanini and Stokowski fought tooth and nail to get the premiere American performance. (Toscanini got his hands on the manuscript first, and Stokowski gave the second performance a few days later.) Here is a Soviet studio recording from the 1950s by Evgeny Mravinsky, the conductor most closely associated with Shostakovich during his lifetime. It is a strong performance with plenty of impact and the Leningrad Philharmonic in good form, and while live Mravinsky versions of several of the symphonies exist in abundance, there are none of the Seventh, making this disc especially valuable.

A decade after its debut performance of the Chamber Symphony Op. 110a by Dmitri Shostakovich (after whom the group is named), The Dmitri Ensemble under Graham Ross performs the composer's String Quartets Nos. 1, 8 and 10, re-worked as thrilling "Chamber Symphonies" for string orchestra by his pupil and advocate, Rudolf Barshai.