Opheli Gaillard Concerto No. 2 in g Minor

Dvořák’s chamber music is amongst the most extensive and significant of the 19th-century and the four surviving piano trios embody his command of the form. The first two were written in rapid succession, with No. 1 in B flat major marrying Schubertian lyricism with Slavic inflexions, serenity with joy. No. 2 in G minor is rather more classically conceived though it shares the same formal structure as No. 1 and exudes a similar quotient of lyric beauty.

France's Naïve label has heavily promoted the career of the young pianist Lise de la Salle, who was 22 when this recording was made. Her fashion-spread good looks fit with Naïve's design concepts, and she has the ability to deliver the spontaneous, unorthodox performances the label favors. How does she fare in a field extremely crowded with Chopin recitals? Her performances certainly aren't derivative of anyone else, and this live recording from the Semperoper in Dresden (you get a one-minute track of just applause at the end) has a good deal of attention-getting flair. The standout feature of de la Salle's performance, in the four ballades at least, is her orientation toward slow tempos, inventively deployed.

Music of the transition: An interesting compilation presented here by Daniel Huppert and the Bergische Symphoniker. The 2nd Violin Concerto by Sergei Prokofiev (soloist: David Nebel), is combined with Symphony No. 25 by Nikolai Myaskovsky. The programme is complemented by the arrangement of the piece "Masks" from Prokofiev's ballet "Romeo and Juliet" for violin and orchestra, made especially for this recording.

Yundi Li goes from strength to strength. Deeply thoughtful and formidably virtuosic, he makes light work of Prokofiev’s nightmarish technical demands. This is a really superb disc. As for Seiji Ozawa, he comes in for some bad press these days but here he is a quite wonderful accompanist, coaxing haunting, unforgettable sounds from the Berlin Phil.

If Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra and Shostakovich's Second Concerto for cello and orchestra had heretofore seemed to be late works shot through with nostalgia and bitterness, that's certainly entirely understandable. Rostropovich, the works' dedicatee who gave both their world premieres, played them that way in his recorded performances and most subsequent cellists have naturally followed his lead.