Listeners who have followed Northern Flowers' releases of the string quartets of Sergey Taneyev will surely want to try this release of the same composer's Piano Quartet and Violin Sonata. The quartet is a big-boned, strong-minded work with a deeply passionate heart, in other words, it's typical of its fin de siècle Russian composer. But the sonata is an altogether lighter, clearer, and much more restrained work that shows Taneyev to have been a master of what would have been called neo-classical pastiche had it been written by
Sergey Prokofiev. To hear the difference between the works most readily, compare the endless outpouring of emotion that is the opening paragraph of the quartet's Adagio with the chaste but radiant lyricism of the sonata's Adagio cantabile. Each work receives exemplary performances. Vladimir Ovcharek is first violinist and leader in the quartet and soloist in the sonata, and in both works he finds the right balance between technique and expressivity. Though some listeners might object to the strings' edge in their upper register, there's no doubting that this is what Ovcharek and his fellow players intended to achieve. Recorded in St. Petersburg in 1987 and 1980, the sound here is surprisingly clean, focused, and forward for its place and time. Indeed, it is so forward that the first entrance of the whole ensemble in the quartet may startle some listeners.