These sonatas are from Shostakovich's last creative decade and share a similar formal trajectory. Michail Zinman's and Andrei Pushkarev's 2005 arrangement of the Violin Sonata might conceivably have opened out the emotional impact of one of his most recondite pieces. Sadly, the Andante merely swaps the original's variegated monochrome for an unvaried gray, with string textures too often congested. In its keener dynamic shading and resourceful use of percussion, the acerbic Allegretto fares better, and the Largo's intensely wrought passacaglia builds impulsively to a climax that yet fails to evoke the sense of irreconcilable opposites locked in ultimately futile combat. Gidon Kremer's playing, however, has lost none of its acute incisiveness or, in the final bars, its expressive intensity.

Vladimir Mendelssohn's 1991 arrangement of the Viola Sonata is now well established. Aside from brief but crucial entries for celesta and vibraphone, strings are employed exclusively but more imaginatively here - though even this does not preclude a certain coarseness creeping in to the Moderato's central episode, or the dance-like gait of the Allegretto from seeming too emphatic. It is in the Adagio that this transcription comes into its own - suffusing the sparse discourse, with its halting allusions to earlier Shostakovich works and disembodied evocation of Beethoven, with a powerful underlying continuity. Yuri Bashmet plays with uncommon commitment and is given unstinting support by Kremerata Baltica. Sound is well balanced, if a touch airless, and there are informative notes from David Fanning. Arrangements recommendable as alternatives to, not replacements for, the originals.