MIKHAIL KOLLONTAY (b.1952): 7 Romantic Ballads, DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975): Aphorisms, Op. 13.

Description: Kollontay's 'Romantic' Ballads are rather more modern than the adjective would suggest, and the brittle, agitated and unpredictable behaviour of the music intriguingly suggests a continuation of the kind of thing the young Shostakovich was up to in his early piano music. The pieces have evocative titles, somewhat sinister at that, and are both technically challenging and vividly characterful, sometimes approaching a kind of spiky, rhythmically complex new complexity; at others, narrative imagery of a persistently dark-hued and rather grotesque sort is the composer's primary concerns. The exceedingly rarely played Aphorisms are the youthful Shostakovich at his most oblique and surreal. The titles and some frankly confusing remarks he made about the pieces serve only to obscure whatever intentions may have lain behind the music. They sound like sketches for the sort of thing he would soon be trying out on a much larger scale, pre-official censure. Irina Chukovskaya (piano).