Viola Sonata, Preludes, etc : L.Power(Va)Crawford-Phillips(P)

Dmitri Shostakovich: Music for viola & piano

Seven Preludes from 24 Preludes Op 34 - arr. Yevgeny Strakhov (1909-1978)
Sonata for viola and piano Op 147
Five Pieces from The Gadfly Op 97 - arr. Vadim Borisovsky (1900-1972)

Lawrence Power, viola
Simon Crawford-Phillips, piano

Recording details: October 2010, Concert Hall, Wyastone Estate, Monmouth, United Kingdom
Produced by Andrew Keener
Engineered by Simon Eadon

Lawrence Power makes the second of his appearances in this month’s release lists, this time with his regular pianist partner Simon Crawford-Phillips in the chamber music of Shostakovich. The centrepiece is the Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s last completed work, premiered posthumously, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday. Its ravishing slow finale reworks the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata - a tribute to a composer he revered.

Shostakovich the film composer also takes a bow, in the form of The Gadfly, with its famous ‘Romance’ beloved of violinists everywhere. That this works just as compellingly on the viola is triumphantly displayed in the arrangement made by Vadim Borisovsky (founding violist of the Beethoven Quartet), one of the Five Pieces he recast from Shostakovich’s original.

Shostakovich’s 24 Piano Preludes have also proved irresistible to transcribers and here we have the seven brilliantly reworked by a pupil of Borisovsky, Yevgeny Strakhov. ( Hyperion )