Shostakovich Orchetral

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.

Shostakovich's introspective Piano Quintet is one of the composer's supreme achievements. Perhaps it was the subtle nod to Baroque forms as well as the Beethoven-like use of fugue that earned this piece a permanent place in the chamber repertoire. The Nash Ensemble, led by Marcia Crayford and Elizabeth Clayton, shines especially in the playful and colorful Scherzo.

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.

The three full-length ballet scores that Dmitry Shostakovich wrote between 1925 and 1935 remain among his least known works. The Golden Age revolves around the visit of a Soviet football team to a Western city (referred to as 'U-town') at the time of an industrial exhibition, only for its heroic sporting and social endeavours constantly to be undermined by hostile administrators, decadent artistes and corrupt officials. Even before its premiere Shostakovich had prepared a suite, including the famous Polka (Naxos 8.553126), which barely hints at the dissonant harmonies and intricate contrapuntal designs to be found elsewhere in the ballet. This recording is the first to present the work complete with all repeats observed, enabling listeners to assess the ballet in all its exhilarating and, at times, anarchic intensity.

This release is the fruit of the French pianist Nicolas Stavy’s efforts to uncover unknown works by Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning some fifty years of the composer’s career, these rarities include early piano pieces influenced by Chopin and the fragment of an unfinished violin sonata, but is bookended by arrangements of symphonic music, by Shostakovich himself and by Mahler, a constant influence.

This EMI Angel release Barber & Shostakovich: Violin Concertos places a new package on a time-honored item, the Barber and Dmitry Shostakovich violin concerti as interpreted by violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg with the London Symphony Orchestra led by Maxim Shostakovich. It originally came out in 1992, and the original release, while it was no "Chant," proved a dependable seller. By reducing the price and putting it into a new package, EMI Angel might seem to be hoping to attract buyers who missed it the first time around, but this is a special case in that it is making available again what may have been the finest recording made by Salerno-Sonnenberg under the terms of her EMI contract.