Music in the Round - May Festival: Traditional

A lunchtime concert featuring two wonderful contrasting pieces.

Borodin’s Piano Quintet is an early work bearing the zestful influence of Chopin, Mendelssohn and above all, Schumann, but there are plenty of hints of Russian idioms that were to become the hallmark of his work.

Shostakovich’s second Piano Trio is an extraordinarily powerful and dramatic work written following both national tragedy (the siege of Leningrad) and the loss of his closest friend, Ivan Sollertinsky. It most certainly deserves its place alongside the magisterial trios of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.