This is not really a song recital, for all that there’s a singer and a pianist on its cover. “Small pieces of opera in a few minutes” is how the soprano Asmik Grigorian describes each of the Rachmaninov romances on this, her debut recital recording, and in these performances with Lukas Geniušas that’s exactly how they come across: 19 self-contained scenes that drip with drama. Perhaps you would expect no less from such a stage animal as Grigorian, but it’s still gratifying to find that her powers of expression are as fierce in front of the microphone as they are on the stage.
