• As a young man in Moscow in the early 1960s Vladimir Ashkenazy was invited by Shostakovich to play a private performance of the Piano Trio No 2 in the composer’s apartment
• Ashkenazy’s friendship with the composer and his lifelong advocacy of his music as a pianist and conductor lends the performances on this album a unique, definitive authority and he is joined by long-standing chamber music partners. Astonishingly, these are Ashkenazy’s first recordings of this music and add to a remarkable Shostakovich discography on Decca
• The three works on this album span Shostakovich’s entire creative life: from the early, rarely heard Trio No 1 – an almost uncharacteristically romantic piece written when he was 16 – to his very last composition, the Viola Sonata of 1975. In between comes the masterpiece which was born of national and personal tragedy in Leningrad in 1944: the Piano Trio No 2
• In the Trios Ashkenazy is reunited with Visontay and Lidström. For the viola sonata, Ashkenazy is joined by the distinguished Norwegian violist Ada Meinich, until recently a member of the Faust Quartet