Daniel Müller-Schott / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Aziz Shokhakimov TRIP TO RUSSIA

This new release features the willfully diverse compositional and emotional landscape of newly discovered and rediscovered nineteenth-century Russian music, performed with dedication and delight in the musics individual detail and perspective. Daniel Muller-Schott ranks among the worlds best cellist and can be heard on all of the foremost international concert stages. A fearless player with technique to burn (New York Times), he has made his mark by delighting audiences for two decades. Muller-Schott works with leading international orchestras: in the US with the orchestras in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles, in Europe with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Radio Orchestras of Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Paris, the London Symphony, and more. In the present recording, he plays the Ex Shapiro Matteo Goffriller cello, made in Venice in 1727, and a bow made by FX Tourte of Paris in c. 1820.

Kim Kashkashian / Robert Levin ELEGIES

Kim Kashkashian is easily one of the finest violists to ever place her bow on the instrument. She shines just as effervescently in the company of an orchestra as she does solo or here alongside Robert Levin, a trusty accompanist with whom she shares a palpable musical bond, and puts the range of her talents on full display in this fine chamber program of mostly rarities.

On the whole, this album is very warmly recorded. Levin pulls from the piano an almost gamelan-like quality, while Kashkashian luxuriates in the plurivocity afforded to her. She interacts with her instrument as would fingers upon a spine and her tonal depth often breaches cello territory. For anyone who is curious to discover what her playing is all about but who is wary of her penchant for the contemporary, this is an ideal place to start. (ECM Reviews)