Shostakovich completed his Viola Sonata in 1975, just a few weeks before he died, making it his last composition, his swan song. The piece was written for the violist of the Beethoven Quartet, Fyodor Druzhinin, who received the score three days before the composer’s death. In this large-scale, three-movement sonata, the composer looks back over his oeuvre and the vicissitudes of his life, quoting from his unfinished opera (The Gamblers), his symphonies, and his Suite in F sharp minor, while the composition’s long, slow final movement stands as a memorial to Beethoven. The critic of the daily paper Izvestia wrote that the piece is “like the catharsis in a tragedy; life, struggles, victory, purification through light, and stepping into immortality.” We hear this heart-rending work in a perceptive performance by regular partners: the Ukrainian violist Maxim Rysanov, and the Armenian pianist Marianna Shirinyan.

Renowned Armenian-born pianist Marianna Shirinyan performs some of Chopin’s most fascinating and fiendish pieces: the four Ballades and four Scherzos. Chopin coined the term ‘ballade’, harking back to medieval minstrels singing poetic ballads. His four Ballades are quite different in character, but share a sense of Romantic story-telling in their dramatic contrasts and virtuoso display.

Mostly written in her youth, Alma Mahler’s Lieder are rarely performed, yet each one is a musical gem that forms an important part of the Romantic song repertoire. This album is the first recording that includes all 17 of her songs. Like her personality, Alma’s songs are mysterious, complex and profound and take the listener on a kaleidoscopic voyage where different layers in text and music can simultaneously express blistering religious sentiments, overwhelming eroticism and profound tenderness.

Armenian-born pianist Marianna Shirinyan and Polish pianist Dominik Wizjan began their collaboration at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where Shirinyan is a professor. On this Orchid Classics release they play both Suites for Two Pianos by Rachmaninov – works that are relatively rarely heard compared with much of the composer’s output, yet which reveal much about the evolution of his style.