Shostakovich: Music for viola and piano – review

Lawrence Power , viola player with the Nash Ensemble and the Leopold String Trio , has a rapidly expanding solo discography exploring unfamiliar repertoire by York Bowen, Vaughan Williams, Takemitsu and now Shostakovich. This fine CD, with the incisive, agile Simon Crawford-Phillips on piano, consists of transcriptions from the 24 Preludes and The Gadfly , as well as the magnificent, dark Sonata for viola and piano Op 147 completed shortly before the composer's death in 1975. Unlike so many last works, Shostakovich wrote this with a knowledge that the end was near, quoting his own string quartets as well as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Crawford-Phillips and Power are eloquent interpreters, spare as well as generous in expressing the work's pervasive melancholy.