Trio Wanderer - Shostakovich: Piano Quintet, Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok

When Shostakovich wrote his Piano Quintet in 1940, most of his chamber music had yet to be composed. Combining formal purity and freedom of tone, the quintet was hailed as a masterpiece and has remained his most popular chamber work. In the last years of a long and productive life, he composed a cycle of songs with piano trio, innovative in both form and structure, a hymn to art, friendship and nature possessing extraordinary evocative power. To tackle these major works of the twentieth century, the Trio Wanderer are joined here by violinist Catherine Montier, violist Christophe Gaugué, and mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk.