Piano quintet

"There are other fine recordings available for both of these Shostakovich works. The Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok for soprano, violin, cello, and piano, Op. 127, were recorded several times by their dedicatee, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and the stirring Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57, has been one of the composer's most popular chamber works ever since its premiere. Nevertheless, this release by Trio Wanderer and mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk merits strong consideration as a standard recording ... Add in excellent sound from the Médiapôle Sainte-Cesaire in Arles, and the result is an extremely exciting Shostakovich release".

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"A period of nearly 30 years separates these two works, yet each of them achieves maximum expression through careful, creative use of minimal musical materials, thus providing musical parables on the hard realities of Soviet Russia in which the works were conceived ... This well recorded disc serves as a reminder that the richness of Shostakovich's chamber output lies not only in the quartets, but in finely crafted works such as these".

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"In politisch gefährlichen Zeiten schrieb Dmitri Schostakowitsch sein Klavierquintett g-Moll, ein Wunsch des Beethoven Quartetts. Die Uraufführung am 23. November 1940 war ein solch rauschender Erfolg, dass der Komponist die ganze Nacht durch die Strassen Moskaus irrte. Es war vermutlich die Verbindung der folkloristischen Melodien und der Tradition des Barock, die Schostakowitsch zu einer ganz eigenen Botschaft benutzte, die wohl auch verstanden worden war".

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"Chamber choice: Trio Wanderer have already established outstanding credentials in Shostakovich with their superb recording of the two Piano Trios. This warmly-engineered release, featuring the ensemble enlarged by violinist Catherine Montier and violist Christophe Gaugué in the Piano Quintet of 1940, consolidates this reputation with a performance that is comprehensively responsive to the various different strands in the work ... . The Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok for mezzo-soprano and piano trio, composed 27 years after the Quintet, is yet more compelling ... and the individual members of Trio Wanderer capture the cycle's contrasting moods of despair, passion, violence, mystery and gentle lyricism with playing of magnetic power and imagination".

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" Shostakovich's Piano Quintet, Op. 57, of 1940, with broad dramatic gestures that endeared the music to Soviet cultural commissars even if it lacked the requisite patriotic content, is effectively rendered here, but the real triumph of the Szymanowski Quartet and especially of German pianist Matthias Kirschnereit comes in the Weinberg, where a certain chilly voice of experience extraordinary in one so young comes through".

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"This disc has the twin virtues of a fascinating program and compelling performance ... Though any Shostakovich fans no doubt already have three or four recordings of the quintet starting with the composer's own with the Beethoven quartet from 1955, they will still want to hear this superlative account".

"Dimitri Schostakowitschs 1940 entstandenes Klavierquintett ist eines seiner populärsten Kammermusikwerke ... Der dunkle, timbrereiche Mezzosopran Ekaterina Semenchuks erweist sich als ideal für diese teils sehr zurückgenommenen, teils hochexpressiven Lyrikausdeutungen des späten Schostakowitsch. Das zum Quintett erweiterte Trio Wanderer zeigt in seinen sensiblen Interpretationen ein feines Gespür für den musikalischen Kosmos dieses unglaublich wandlungsfähigen Komponisten".

"Die Realisierungen durch das Szymanowski-Quartett und Matthias Kirschnereit sind untadelig bis zum letzten Pianissimo".

"Boldly engineered and fresh-minted performances by Shostakovich and the Beethoven Quartet, the Piano Quintet particularly probing emotionally".