A new release in the continuing series exploring the music of Dimity Shostakovich and his friend and contemporary Mieczyslaw Weinberg. The present volume focuses on the piano works of these two masters (previous releases explored the parallel Piano Trios, Violin Sonatas and Cello Sonatas).

There is very little competition of the rarely recorded “Aphorisms” and the “Notebook for Children” in addition to the first recording of “Twenty sketches” by the wife of pianist Jascha Nemtsov, who is renown for his landmark series of recordings of music of the St. Petersburg and Moscow New Jewish School at the beginning of the 20th century.

The works on this program are all sets of miniatures, suggestive either directly or through inference of the experiences of children. However, these pieces are worlds apart from pieces for children written by Robert Schumann or Tchaikovsky; they are rarely joyful and without care. As least as far as concerns Weinberg and Shostakovich, they had little reason to reflect upon the “joys of childhood” in their lives. Jascha Nemtsov succeeds here with a great and intelligent coupling, which regards approaches phenomenon of childhood from a dramatic and somewhat dark side.