When I reviewed Shlomo Mintz's outstanding disc of the Shostakovich Violin and Viola Sonatas last November I suspected Bashmet would soon be on the scene. Here he now is, and his playing does not disappoint. It has that combination of rhythmic suppleness, physical agility and, where required, an open-throated tonal plangency, that has helped him to live up to the most extravagant encomia. And I cannot imagine anyone listening unmoved to the protesting cadenza in Shostakovich's finale (8'34''–10'12'', fig. 73–4 in the score) or to the passages a little later which seem to approach the threshold of the unknown. This is music which charts out a region beyond heart-break, and Bashmet guides us there with unerring precision.
Having said all that, I would by no means want to dismiss the Erato version. As in most of the duo repertoire the piano part is of equal significance and much as I admire Mikhail Muntian (who partnered Fedor Druzhinin in the premiere performance) he is a more subservient accompanist than Postnikova; he also sounds rather too backwardly balanced in RCA's very resonant recording. Not only that, but some of Bashmet's detailed inflexions, as in the very opening pizzicatos, are distracting—Mintz's smoother line here and Postnikova's withdrawn tone set up a chilling mood of uneasy drifting. Again, there are places in the central scherzo where Mintz sounds to my ears rather closer to the Jewish dance-character. Bashmet undoubtedly makes the more distinctive viola sound—Mintz's is more like a large violin—but if pushed I think I would stay with Mintz and Postnikova for the more comprehensive musical experience.
The remainder of Bashmet's disc is enterprisingly chosen. Admittedly the Glinka is no more than a mildly interesting apprentice piece, and it could be said that this performance plays it for more than it is worth. But the 12½-minute Sonata by Nikolai Roslavets is a considerable novelty. A lot of nonsense has been talked in IRCAM and South Bank circles about Roslavets's progressive credentials. As the recent series of London concerts confirmed he was essentially a post-Scriabinesque ecstatic whose music was extensively shored up by mechanical devices. It lacks the concentration of Scriabin, the introspection of the Second Viennese School, or any comparable individuality of its own. The Viola Sonata is a characteristically bitty piece, and all Bashmet and Muntian's considerable artistry cannot disguise its staleness of gesture. All the same the final evaporation creates a certain frisson, and it is salutary to be reminded that such music was being composed at all in the Soviet Union of the late 1920s.'