For his first Sony Classical recording, Mr. Bashmet has chosen two popular favorites of the chamber music repertoire, each in unusual versions for viola and chamber orchestra: the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and Shostakovich's String Quartet No.13. Each of these pieces feels both familiar and fresh to the listener, and each displays his greatest strengths as an artist.

Brahms' Quintet in B minor for Viola and Strings, Op.115 is one of the most popular pieces in all of chamber music. Although the version for clarinet and strings is more familiar to the listener, Brahms himself wrote this version for viola, and the remaining parts have been arranged for an accompanying string ensemble.

For fans of Russian music, this recording of Shostakovich's Sinfonia for Viola and Strings is definitive. Shostakovich has produced one of the only significant sets of string quartets in this century, and the Sinfonia is an evocative arrangement of one of them, No.13 in B-flat minor.

Mr. Bashmet is joined in both works by the Moscow Soloists, an ensemble of young virtuosi from his native Moscow with whom he has worked for over six years.