The title of ECM's release of works by three composers born in the former Soviet Union perfectly captures the mood of the CD - it is truly mysterious. Although more than half a century separates the first of these pieces from the most recent, they share a sense of otherness that defies easy explanation. The pieces are not so much mysterious in the sense of being eerie (although there are several moments that might raise the hairs on the back of your neck if you were listening alone in the dark); they are unsettling because they raise more questions than they answer.

Silvestrov's Post Scriptum is disturbingly enigmatic. You may find yourself scratching your head at the juxtapositions (and simultaneities) of disparate idioms - Mozartian classicism, new age repetitions and progressions, aleatory elements, and modernist gestures - but the ultimate effectiveness and emotional directness of the piece are undeniable. On any rational level, there is no reason why the piece should succeed, but it works beautifully. The composer's Misterioso is a tour de force, although a quiet one, for a performer who is required to play both the clarinet and piano virtuosically, simultaneously.

Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel receives its first recording here in a version for clarinet and piano. As with so much of Pärt's work, the listener is left amazed at how the composer produces music that is devoid of cliché and beautiful, using only the simplest elements of harmony and melody.

Galina Ustvolskaya was a student of Shostakovich's. Her Trio for clarinet, violin and piano and her Sonata for violin and piano would be difficult to identify as the work of a composer trained at the height of Soviet control over its artists. Both works demonstrate more than a casual commitment to modernism, not so much in their harmonic language as in the extremely eccentric syntax of some of the movements. She is a composer who should be better known in the West - these quirky and attractive pieces deserve a place in the repertoire of contemporary chamber music.

The music is given committed performances by pianist Aleksei Lubimov, violinist Alexander Trostiansky, and clarinetist (and pianist) Kyrill Rybakov. ECM's recording quality is excellent - its clarity gives you the feeling of sharing an intimate space with the performers and that's ideal for this music.

Commissioned for the bicentenary of Mozart's death, Silvestrov's 1991 Post-Scriptum is the ghost of a Classical violin sonata, familiar melodic gestures dissolving into uneasily rocking ostinatos, cadences interrupted and frozen in palsied stasis, signifiers of nostalgia and regret. It makes a fitting start to this well-filled CD. By contrast, Silvestrov's recent Misterioso, written for the clarinettist and pianist Evgeny Orkin, performed here by Kirill Rybakov, has a bracing solidity, bold in its dissonance and expressionistic gestures - an important addition to the clarinet repertoire. A new clarinet version of Pärt's well-known Spiegel im Spiegel acts as an exquisite, unworldly demarcation between Silvestrov and two of Ustvolskaya's early chamber works. Her 1949 Clarinet Trio is already defiantly odd in its bare textures, its snatches of ostinato, its refusal of all rhetoric, as though Minimalism were struggling to be born before its time. Much the same is true, with greater intensity, of the single-movement Violin Sonata; the coda, with its dolorous knocking on the wood of the piano, anticipates the woodblock tattoos of Ustvolskaya's later symphonies. These are all magnificent performances, as one might expect from these three musicians, who regularly perform together as a trio, and their sound is superbly and rawly caught by ECM's recording. Their marvellously hieratic account of Ustvolskaya's Trio is clearly superior to the more superficial reading by The Barton Workshop (on Etcetera). Trostiansky and Lyubimov come up against stiff competition in Gidon Kremer's mesmerizing account of Silvestrov's Post Scriptum, albeit this - due for reissue on Apex early next year



Tracklist:

Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937)

Post Scriptum (1990)
Sonata for violin & piano
01. I. Largo - Allegro (9:13)
02. II. Andantino (3:51)
03. III. Allegro Vivace, Con Moto (3:26)

04. Misterioso (1996)
for clarinet solo (with piano) (19:36)

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)

05. Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)
version for clarinet & piano 2003 (7:39)

Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006)

Trio (1949) for clarinet, violin & piano
06. I. Espressivo (6:32)
07. II. Dolce (3:23)
08. III. Energico (6:36)

09. Sonata (1952) for violin & piano (19:40)