We used to see Shostakovich’s output discussed in terms of confessional chamber works and public symphonies, not that the division ever made much sense. The Piano Quintet rarely foregrounds the darkest shadows, its idiom guarded enough to permit the award of a Stalin Prize First Class in 1941. Interpretations have ranged from the intimate to the quasi-orchestral, not that anyone canters through the score with quite the alacrity of the composer himself with the Beethoven Quartet in 1946 (Parlophone, 8/58).

Vincent Coq, long associated with the august French-based trio at the heart of the present venture, doesn’t emulate the angry projection with which Vladimir Ashkenazy launched his classic Decca collaboration with the Fitzwilliam Quartet in 1983. Still, the Bachian opening soliloquy is comparably direct. No hint here of Marc-André Hamelin’s quixotic rubato with the Takács (Hyperion, 5/15), nor of Piotr Anderszewski’s more perfumed pianism with the Belcea (Alpha, 7/18). While the plainer approach delivers something residually ‘authentic’, the strengths of the new recording are located elsewhere. Most remarkable is the beauty of sound, not only a matter of improving technology but confirmation of the sensitive balance maintained by the players themselves. Tempos are mainstream, the Scherzo neither a mad dash nor the deliberate trudge patented by Sviatoslav Richter with the 1980s Borodin line-up (Melodiya, 11/85). Dynamics are observed with tact and a certain decorum. Such music-making may satisfy lovers of the special intimacies of chamber music as much as dedicated admirers of the composer.

Following the precedent set by that vintage Ashkenazy-led disc, Trio Wanderer’s coupling is the Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Blok, Op 127. Written for soprano Galina Vishnevskaya in 1967, the cycle is spare (only in the final song is the soloist joined by the complete piano trio), intensity of expression de rigueur. The latest star guest is Ekatarina Semenchuk, the Minsk-born mezzo famously good in Verdi, plainly confident in her native tongue and with an impressive vocal range. Swedish soprano Elisabeth Söderström, a fabulous linguist herself, was caught later in her career for an account leaner in tone, bleaker in feeling. Harmonia Mundi stops there after less than an hour but provides full texts and translations; Decca found room for two modest extras for string quartet, the Elegy and Polka, Op 34a.