Album: Gidon Kremer, Gierdre Dirvanauskaite, Khatia Buniatishvili, Tchaikovsky, Kissine: Piano Trios (ECM New Series)

Gidon Kremer's dazzling trio here offers two contrasting approaches to the Piano Trio, both offering unexpected pleasures. Tchaikovsky was unsuited to the task of writing such a trio, being unable to bear the combination of piano with cello or violin.

But he overcame his initial distaste to compose one of the landmark pieces in the form. Based on lines from an Akhmatova poem, Victor Kissine's Zerkalo is by contrast unashamedly modern, particularly notable for the way Kremer's violin sustains the high notes of the piano, blending seamlessly to produce reflections between the elements Tchaikovsky considered so antithetical.

DOWNLOAD THIS Zerkalo; Trio