Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A Minor

Lang Lang revisits giants of Russia's Romantic musical soul, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, to reveal another side of his prodigious talent–his finesse as a collegial interpreter of chamber music. This release, Lang Lang`s first ever chamber music recording, also features two giants of their instruments: Vadim Repin on violin and Mischa Maisky on cello. Lang Lang could not be in better company to reveal the inexhaustible inventiveness of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor, op. 50 or the tender consolations of Rachmaninov's Trio élégiaque no. 1 in G-minor, a short early masterpiece composed before Rachmaninov was twenty.

Maurice Gendron (December 26, 1920, near Nice – August 20, 1990, Grez-sur-Loing) was a French cellist and teacher. He is widely considered one of the greatest cellists of the twentieth century.
He recorded most of the standard concerto repertoire with conductors such as Bernard Haitink, Raymond Leppard, and Pablo Casals, and with orchestras such as the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Established in Moscow in 1945, and still performing today, the Borodin Quartet sustains a distinctive tradition in the interpretation of Russian chamber music. Over the decades its members – all trained at the Moscow Conservatory – have inevitably changed, but the ensemble’s identity has remained cohesive, its philosophy and aesthetic embodying an entire musical culture. The quartet’s close association with Dmitri Shostakovich has gone down in history, and his chamber works are central to this 8CD collection which, offering music by a succession of Russian composers from Borodin himself to Schnittke, spans the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ashkenazy Completes Lifelong Project To Record Each Of Rachmaninov’s Works With Piano. Vladimir Ashkenazy, one of the most renowned and revered pianists of our times, crowns his lifelong project to record each of Rachmaninov’s works with piano with the release of Rachmaninov Piano Trios. He performs the composer’s Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor and the Trio élégiaque No. 2 in D minor Op. 9.

Tchaikovsky’s celebrated large-scale Trio Op.50 sets the tone of this recording, at once elegiac and virtuosic. Dedicated to his friend Nikolay Rubinstein with the French epigraph ‘À la mémoire d'un grand artiste’, it shows great originality both in its dimensions and in its style, which calls for highly skilled performers. A similarly ambitious work is the Trio Op.32 of Anton Stepanovich Arensky, also dedicated to the memory of a musician, the cellist Karl Davidov (1838-89). This gem of chamber music, much less often played, constitutes the true discovery of the programme.