Born in Chelyabinsk in 1973, Lera Auerbach defected from the former Soviet Union to the United States while still in her teens, and she has since garnered much attention as both pianist and composer, notably in her recent work with Gidon Kremer. Written in 1999, Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano amply showcase her stylistic leanings and wide emotional range. Clearly, she's imbibed from the Shostakovich/Schnittke watering hole, as we hear in the frequent sparse textures in extreme registers, petulant dynamic shifts, obsessive pedal points, and caustic, folk-oriented tunes. Auerbach also has figured out what makes Astor Piazzolla tick, and manages to personalize his sultry harmonic idiom. The most interesting moments occur when the composer's original voice pushes her influences out of the way, as in the sudden, unexpected violin cadenza that immediately follows Prelude No. 15's unrelenting dance. This leads to a threnody that gradually dematerializes into a high-register mist, and before you know it, Prelude No. 16 is over. The Postlude and solo violin piece also typify the ease with which Auerbach communicates her ideas. Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high. Such big playing requires the larger-than-life engineering BIS provides.

In Russian chamber music, a rather special tradition evolved around the piano trio, with a number of composers turning to the genre to write ‘instrumental requiems’. First out was Tchaikovskywith his Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, ‘à la mémoired’un grand artiste’, and he was followed by composers such as Rachmaninov, Arenskyand Shostakovich. In the case of Tchaikovsky’s trio, the ‘grand artiste’ was the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky chose the trio genre as he felt that a piece for solo piano would be too lightweight and one with orchestral accompaniment would be too showy. The work is in two movements, a Pezzoelegiaco(‘elegiac piece’) and a set of variations, and it begins with the cello playing a moving lament which sets the tone for the entire first movement. The theme returns at the end of the second movement in the form of an impassioned funeral march.

After acclaimed recordings of the great Romantic violin concertos by Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the genre: Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61.