David Geringas - The Art of the Duo (2020)

The pianist Tatjana Geringas celebrated her 75th birthday in 2020. With David Geringas, whom she met while studying at the Moscow Conservatory, she played in a duo from an early age - in front of his teacher Mstislav Rostropovich, soon before large audiences throughout the Soviet Union, after their joint emigration in the great halls of the world. Artists who heard her, Rostropovich, Pierre Fournier, Isaak Stern or Leonard Rose, were entranced by her: Strength, precision, sensitivity are the hallmarks of her playing. She has the courage to explore new languages of music, but at the same time an infallible feeling for the styles of the past. Composers like Krzysztof Meyer, Viktor Suslin, Erkki-Sven Tüür or Anatolijus Šenderovas have dedicated works to Tatjana Geringas. Many recordings, which were made as a duo with her husband David Geringas, have been awarded prizes.

The CD The Art of the Duo is a compilation of authentic testimonies to the history of music in the 20th century, which has been a focus of the joint work of Tatjana and David Geringas from the very beginning. It presents a selection of outstanding duo recordings, paying particular attention to those composers who had a special, personal relationship with Tatjana and David Geringas themselves. Thus Shostakovich wrote to his personal secretary Isaak Glikman on 12 May 1972: "... yesterday Maxim performed my 15th symphony (at the 'Moscow Stars' festival). The cellist David Geringas played my 1st Cello Concerto very well instead of Rostropovich, who had fallen ill". David Geringas had previously won the All-Unions Competition (1969) and the International Tchaikovsky Competition (1970) in Moscow with the aforementioned cello concerto. Geringas' then teacher Rostropovich praised the cellist as "the best Shostakovich player"; it was he who had recommended David Geringas to the composer. Shostakovich himself dedicated his two cello concertos to his former pupil Rostropovich.

On the present album we hear Shostakovich's Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, op. 40, composed in 1934, which is already oriented towards the doctrine of socialist realism and fits into classicist gestures and formal relationships, towards general comprehensibility. Thus the sonata is predominantly melodically and harmonically gentle compared to the composer's earlier works.