RODION SHCHEDRIN (b.1932): Menuhin Sonata for Violin and Piano, Echo-Sonate for Violin Solo, Cello Sonata, In Stile von Albéniz for Violin and Piano.

Description: In his relatively small output for chamber forces, Shchedrin frequently presents an intimate, introspective mood, the music's emotional content presented in transparently communicative terms. Thus almost the first half of the 1999 Menuhin-Sonata consists of a recitative-like soliloquy for the violin, with very economical accompaniment; a brief scurrying disturbance is soon replaced by more elegiac, reflective music. The earlier solo sonata is more demonstrative, though with a similar sense of reflective inner argument. Composed for the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth, the piece works a tiny fragmentary allusion to Bach into its texture. The cello sonata (1996) suggests late Shostakovich, though never in a derivative or imitative sense. The first movement begins indecisively, before settling into a somber, eloquent mood, the music given to the instruments tersely argumentative, rather than collaborative in character. The middle movement is a satirical scherzo, clumsy and humorous, full of off-beat accents and drunken rhythmic lurching. The finale is an expressive threnody, very Shostakovich-like, with a sense of mounting anger and despair. Dmitri Sitkovetsky (violin), David Grigorian (cello), Rodion Shchedrin (piano), Ludmila Lissovaya (piano - cello sonata).