This brooding selection of Shostakovich’s chamber music reveals much of the introspection and fine attention to detail with which the Florestan Piano Trio, one of the most exciting ensembles on the British classical music scene, approaches its performance. Shostakovich’s first piano trio sets the tone here, with typical dramatic extremity pushed from every bar, looking towards the bleaker soundscape created in the second piano trio.
This work, composed during the Second World War, repeatedly declares its time with constant evocations of mortality. The Florestan Trio responds sensitively, particularly in the third movement, with violinist Anthony Marwood and cellist Richard Lester demonstrating their astonishing potential for timbre as they push the music into moments of tired serenity. The ‘dance of death’ folk motif running through the final movement is carefully set out, never stepping into the overly passionate. Despite the relentless speed maintained by the Florestan Trio, pianist Susan Tomes still allows for a calculating palette. It is with this control that the music is reigned back in by the very end, leaving an unresolved numbness.
These two trios are complemented by Shostakovich’s settings of seven poems by Alexander Blok for soprano and piano trio. Susan Gritton’s voice catches the menacing yet soaring quality of the melodic lines, under which Tomes works to produce lines of shaded intensity. In the final song, ‘Muzïka’, all four performers unite to produce music of an insular yet displaced character with immaculate focus on the minutiae of the score.
This is not an easy record; it is difficult music, often straddling the psychological, approached with much finesse. With the Florestan players announcing their final season, their last recording for Hyperion makes for compelling listening.
Review: Shostakovich by Florestan Trio and Susan Gritton
