Discovered a few years ago busking in the subways, the young members of Trio Voronezh all graduated from the Academy of Music in Voronezh, a Russian city south of Moscow. They perform their exquisitely inventive arrangements of everything from Vivaldi to Schubert to Shostakovich on bajan (a chromatic button accordion), domra (a three-stringed mandolin), and double-bass balalaika. You would never guess at the versatility of these instruments in the right hands. But as sweet as the combination is, it ultimately showcases the instruments rather than the music. The trio barrels through works by Bach and Gershwin, and expresses the most sensitivity (not surprisingly) for Russian folk music and Tchaikovsky. These three may just need more time to mature musically, now that they have found their distinctive niche.
