DSCH-Shostakovich Ensemble SHOSTAKOVICH Complete Chamber Music for Piano and Strings

While underlining Dmitri Shostakovich’s importance in the history of music, the musicologist Lev Mazel wrote: ‘if human culture does not die out, the life and personality of Dmitri Shostakovich will be studied in depth for centuries and centuries. Just as every detail concerning Beethoven attracts the attention not only of specialists, but a great number of layman, every detail of the life and work of Shostakovich will be of interest to posterity’. So, what do we know of the life of Shostakovich? That it was full, agitated, under constant public judgement and without any slowing of creative output until the end. A few friends and family members could experience an image of him as an engaged citizen assuming his civic responsibilities but also, most importantly, an image of a citizen engaged with and devoted to his art like few others. This image began to be modified after his death as soon as his memoires, journals and diaries started to be published, a process which increased and developed during the post-Soviet era. This contributed to a re-evaluation of Shostakovich during the period following the Cold War and, more generally, of the whole phenomenon of Soviet culture. The posthumous reception of Shostakovich and his music, beyond expanded recognition of his artistic value, became the object of unflagging fascination on the part of musicians, musicologists, journalists and the general public. Even today, we witness great debates on the extra-musical content of his work, particularly the autobiographical fingerprint that Shostakovich explicitly inscribed in certain pieces –for example, his eighth String Quartet, the tenth Symphony, the first Concertos for Violin and Cello and the Sonata for Violin and Piano–, by imposing an occult musical signature. The famous musical motif DSCH which corresponds to the first letters of his first and last names, which correspond to musical note names in German: Dmitri (S)CHostakovitch = DSCH = D, E flat, C, B. On 5 January 1944, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote in a letter to Antal Molnár: ‘Chamber music requires of the composer the most perfect technique and the greatest depth of thought. I would not be too far from the truth if I affirmed that, sometimes, behind the “sparkle” of the orchestral sound is hidden a lack of imagination. Composing chamber music pieces is, for me, significantly more difficult than composing orchestral works…a lack of depth in the thought process in chamber music is simply intolerable’. [….] (Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro)

Batiashvili / Brendel / Fellner / Freston / Williams HARRISON BIRTWISTLE Chamber Music

This album of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s chamber music and songs, mostly of recent vintage, is issued as the innovative Great British composer approaches his 80^th birthday. It features an exceptional cast. Heard together and separately is the trio of Austrian pianist Till Fellner, Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili and English cellist Adrian Brendel. They are joined by London-born singers Amy Freston and Roderick Williams. The compositions include “Bogenstrich” written in 2006 as a short piece in tribute to Alfred Brendel and first played by his son Adrian together with Fellner. It was subsequently expanded into a cycle with the addition of settings of Rilke for baritone, cello and piano. The “Trio” is the newest piece, premiered in 2011, a 16-minute single movement work of elaborate patterning, gestures and responses, for piano, violin and cello. Settings of the writings of US Objectivist poet Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), scored for soprano and cello in 1998 and 2000, begin and close the album. As Bayan Northcott writes in the booklet, “These concentrated songs demand the utmost of their performers in precision, expression and timing. As in Webern’s settings, the few words and notes on the page can seem to imply whole worlds of thought and feeling”. This highly-concentrated chamber-scale expressivity is felt throughout the entire album, recorded at Munich’s famed Herkulessaal, and produced by Manfred Eicher.