Lukas Geniusas (piano)

Aylen Pritchin (violin)

Alexander Buzlov (cello)

Firma Melodiya presents the album “3×3”, another release from the series Melodia Apriori. Three young musicians play three piano trios written by three 20th century composers. The names of Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Shostakovich and Moisey Weinberg are featured on this extraordinary release. Ravel’s Trio written on the eve of World War I sounds like a peculiar counterpoint to Shostakovich’s early Trio No. 1, a piece written in a pronounced romantic manner when the composer was a student of the St. Petersburg Conservatory while the Shostakovich as we know him is presented here only hintingly. Moisey Weinberg, who has been usually referred to as one from Shostakovich’s circle, fled to the USSR from Poland when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and lost almost his entire family there, wrote his piano trio at the end of the Great Patriotic War. Bearing the stamp of the composer’s bright identity without any taint of imitation of Shostakovich, this music breathes true tragedy of despair. All three musicians on this release- Aylen Pritchin, Alexander Buzlov, and Lukas Geniusas- are excellent interpreters and have each won several prizes for their solo works.