Shostakovich famously told his pupil Galina Ustvolskaya (to whom he also unsuccessfully proposed marriage); "It's not you who are under my influence, it's me who is under yours." The earliest pieces here, the 1949 Clarinet Trio (not premièred until 1968) and the 1952 Sonata for violin and piano, move forward as if each player, eyes to the ground, is taking in a large, bleak vista one step at a time. The 1964 Duet for violin and piano is blacker than the blackest Shostakovich, more dissonant (lots of clusters replacing what would earlier have been single notes), more violent, more determined in its use of extremes of register. These performances find tenderness as well as grit in the anchorite- like fixity of Ustvolskaya's vision. url.ie/kh67