Search - Dmitry Shostakovich, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Boris Berezovsky :: Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich: Piano Trios

Vadim Repin's international solo career was launched when he won the Queen Elizabeth Competition at the age of 17, and he now has a formidable reputation as a top-flight virtuoso. He has so far confined his chamber music activities primarily to summer festivals in Europe, so he is less widely known as a chamber music player. This record should serve to rectify that. The playing shows that the three musicians are frequent partners and the music is just right for them, demanding both virtuosity and ensemble rapport. Technically, everything is meticulously worked out and crystal clear, both individually and together. Their affinity for the style allows them to approach tempo and rhythm with freedom and flexibility; the transitions are balanced, the melodies sing and speak with the inflections of their native language. The players bring out mood and character and make both works intensely moving, but the expressiveness is always noble and restrained, without external effects. The Tchaikovsky has grandeur, sorrowful lamentation, and lilting grace; the Shostakovich combines bleak despair with sardonic irony and grotesquerie. The disc's only flaw is the recorded balance: the piano sounds too close, the strings too distant. --Edith Eisler