It may seem downright grumpy to complain about a three-CD set of some of the greatest chamber music of the 20th century that retails for a smidgen under $30.
But, in a collection that could have offered Shostakovich's complete chamber music outside his quartets, why are we denied the first
of his two piano trios?
Two discs are fine Dutch recordings from the early 90s, bathing the Piano Quintet, in particular, in almost orchestral resonance.
If pianist Edward Auer and his companions are a little over-boisterous in the Scherzo, the Fugue has just the right pairing of ice and silk.
The E minor Piano Trio, a work of the war years, is a concert hall favourite. Auer, Christiaan Bor and Nathaniel Rosen catch moods that veer from the elegiac to a potent mix of circus and jackboot.
The second disc offers the composer's sonatas for violin and viola, the latter being Shostakovich's last composition.
Isabelle van Keulen and Ronald Brautigam are spiritually at one with these searching scores. The final movement of the Viola Sonata, extending a long solo through hints of Beethoven moonlight to equivocal chorale, is the journey of a soul.
Alas, the third disc is not so scrupulous in acknowledging sources.
Colin Stone's definitive recordings of the two piano sonatas date from 2000. The first is 12 minutes of relentless energy, the second features a Largo of rare and delicate nuance.
Timora Rosler and Klara Wurtz reveal the Cello Sonata in more translucent colours than some. The lyricism of the Largo shines through, although the final Allegretto loses none of its bite.
If you want Russian music on the decadent side, Riccardo Muti's collection of Scriabin's orchestral music, recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra almost 20 years ago, is sybaritic paradise on three discs.
When Boris Pasternak heard Scriabin play his Third Symphony he marvelled at the way it "thumbed its nose at everything respectably decrepit and majestically dull" and was "insanely, mischievously daring and free, frivolous and elemental as a fallen angel".
Muti and his Philadelphians have created a musical universe of such denizens, in a recording that still has no competitor.
* Shostakovich, Chamber Music (Brilliant Classics 7535)
Scriabin, Symphonies (Brilliant Classics 92744); both through Ode Records, both $29.95
<EM>On track: </EM>Potent mixes of Russian moods have no competitors
It may seem downright grumpy to complain about a three-CD set of some of the greatest chamber music of the 20th century that retails for a smidgen under $30.
But, in a collection that could have offered Shostakovich's complete chamber music outside his quartets, why are we denied the first
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