Melodiya presents Low Strings, the first release from the Melodiya Apriori series.

For the past twenty-five years, a Russian label hasn’t released a project as uncommon and tricky as this. It is absolutely beyond the conventional notion of “chamber music recording,” neither by instrumental lineup (a viola, a cello and a double bass – it’s hardly the most advantageous of combinations that coincides lay belief), nor by selection of the music genres and styles. Matthew Locke, a representative of early English Baroque, Beethoven with his comic “eyeglasses” duet, his contemporary Bernhard Romberg, and next to them Alfred Schnittke, Vladimir Ryabov and composers of West European avant-garde with electronics attached.

The artistic will of the performers is perhaps the principal consolidating point of the album. It first of all applies to violist, organizer and enlightener Serge Poltavsky who united the effort of cellist Evgeny Rumyantsev, double bass player Grigory Krotenko (his role in the recording of the album is one of the leading ones) and sound engineer of the Moscow Conservatory and creator of the single sonic space of the Low Strings Mikhail Spassky.

It is also gratifying to hear not a distilled studio work, but live concert sound recorded at the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 2016. So, Melodiya, as it did many years ago, documents the recent past again. The fact itself makes us confident that this recording will find its listener.