Vadim Zeland il Proiettore

Ideally, a piano trio should be balanced in its voices and the parts more or less equally matched in expression, but it sometimes happens in late Romantic chamber music that an overwrought piano part can create the opposite conditions. In the Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor by Sergey Rachmaninov and the Piano Trio in A minor by Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, the piano is clearly the dominant force, because it carries most of the thematic material, harmonic textures, and dramatic gestures, and thereby reduces the violin and cello to subsidiary roles.

Born in Chelyabinsk in 1973, Lera Auerbach defected from the former Soviet Union to the United States while still in her teens, and she has since garnered much attention as both pianist and composer, notably in her recent work with Gidon Kremer. Written in 1999, Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano amply showcase her stylistic leanings and wide emotional range. Clearly, she's imbibed from the Shostakovich/Schnittke watering hole, as we hear in the frequent sparse textures in extreme registers, petulant dynamic shifts, obsessive pedal points, and caustic, folk-oriented tunes. Auerbach also has figured out what makes Astor Piazzolla tick, and manages to personalize his sultry harmonic idiom. The most interesting moments occur when the composer's original voice pushes her influences out of the way, as in the sudden, unexpected violin cadenza that immediately follows Prelude No. 15's unrelenting dance. This leads to a threnody that gradually dematerializes into a high-register mist, and before you know it, Prelude No. 16 is over. The Postlude and solo violin piece also typify the ease with which Auerbach communicates her ideas. Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high. Such big playing requires the larger-than-life engineering BIS provides.

Apparently a staple in Russia, the music of Taneyev exists on the fringes of the repertoire in the West, something that should be rectified–and will be if this superb CD made by a starry cast of performers gets the attention it deserves. He’s a Romantic composer, but hardly of the heart-on-sleeve variety, since he was a master of counterpoint and firmly encased his Romantic impulses in a well-fitted classical jacket. Sometimes he makes you think of a more modern, pungent Brahms with a Russian accent.

I read a rave review of Vadim Gluzman in concert, and since I hd never heard of the Ukraine-born, naturalized Israeli violinist, I sought out this CD. The 45-year-old virtuoso is from the Oistrakh-Vengerov mold: intense, large-scaled, and powerful. All his talents are needed in the late, bleak Shostakovich Violin Sonata. The cover art, showing Gluzman dressed in black gazing out over a flat gray landscape typifies the music.