Various - Veress: String Trio - Bartók: Piano Quintet - Presto Classical

Two real rarities here, and both are terrific: Veress’s 1954 String Trio encompasses Shostakovichesque bleakness, jazz and extended techniques such as knocking and slapping the bodies of the instruments (deployed to hair-raising effect in the moto perpetuo second movement), after which the lush, nigh-on symphonic expansiveness of Bartók’s early Piano Quintet (1897) quite takes the breath away with its whispers of Brahms and even Elgar.