Search - Rachmaninoff Trio Moscow :: Shostakovich: Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2; Cello Sonata [Hybrid SACD]

Not Quite in the Top Echelon

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/13/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Many music lovers know and love Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio, Op. 67, one of the towering chamber music works of the twentieth century. Fewer know his early First Piano Trio, written when he was seventeen and still a student at the Conservatoire. This CD starts off with that one-movement, eleven-minute work which, although it does sound like Shostakovich, has echoes of Tchaikovsky and Taneyev, an entirely lovely piece that probably doesn't get played as much as it should because it is overshadowed by its younger brother. It is played here by the Rachmaninov Moscow Trio whose players are Mikhail Tsinman, violin, Natalia Savinova, cello, and Victor Yampolsky, piano.



Next on this disc is the composer's Cello Sonata in D Minor, Op. 40 (1934), played by the trio's cellist and pianist. Sad to say, Savinova's and Yampolsky's performance is not in the same class as that of Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax Shostakovich: Trio, Op.67/Sonata, Op.40, a recording that also includes the Op. 67 Trio, or of Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich in Concert. Savinova's playing includes some dodgy intonation and a rather laid-back approach which some may feel fits the music; I happen to prefer Ma's or Maisky's élan.



There is rather more competition in recordings of the Op. 67 Trio. It was written by Shostakovich in 1944 and although I've read that it was Shostakovich's response to the horrors of World War II, it was actually composed in memory of the composer's great friend, Ivan Sollertinsky, a musicologist who was the first Russian to write extensively about the music of Mahler, a composer who was, of course, a great influence on Shostakovich. One can hear the composer's anguish at his friend's death in the wintry atmosphere of the first movement which then progresses to a trudging finale which I've always taken to indicate Shostakovich's recognition that the world (and he) had to go on however difficult that was. Although the Rachmininov Trio Moscow plays the Trio acceptably, there are, again, some intonation problems and smudgy sound from the cello, and some flaccid articulations from both string players on occasion. This performance does not come anywhere near that of the Beaux Arts Trio Shostakovich: Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2; Seven Romances which also includes the First Trio, or that of Maisky, Argerich and Gidon Kremer Shostakovich/Tchaikovsky: Piano Trios. A fine set that includes both Trios as well as all the violin and cello sonatas is that of the Kalichstein - Laredo - Robinson Trio Shostakovich: Complete Trios & Sonatas.



Scott Morrison

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