Search - Nikolay Medtner, Ludwig van Beethoven :: Medtner: Complete Solo Piano Recordings, Vol. 1

An Essential Medtner Recording

M. Masumoto | Russian River, CA USA | 03/31/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nicolai Medtner, a contemporary and friend of Rachmaninoff, is perhaps the greatest composer for piano since Beethoven. A virtuoso concert pianist of the highest caliber in his own right, Medtner composed relentlessly tonal piano music of great beauty and intense rhythmic complexity at a time when atonal music was coming into vogue in the Western art music world. Although stunningly beautiful, his compositions were thought to be too "old fashioned" in the West and so were brushed aside by "serious" music scholars, causing Medtner to live in poverty during his exile in the West following the Bolshevik Revolution. Nevertheless, Medtner's Russian musical contemporaries fervently admired both his compositions and his piano playing; Glazunov even called Medtner something like "The Guardian of Eternal Art."



This CD presents for the first time Medtner's earliest commercial audio recordings, made for Columbia Records in 1930/31 but never released. These are transfers from Medtner's own test pressings on shellac discs; the original masters were long since destroyed. Lovingly cleaned up and restored, these recordings are the real deal, an authentic revelation of Medtner's interpretive intent in his compositions (compositions which have no established performance tradition in the West). Not only do they represent an invaluable resource for pianists who wish to tackle Medtner's compositions, they are wonderfully enjoyable to listen to, tremendous recordings of some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard.



Now, obviously, these are archival, not modern, recordings. The restoration presents them beautifully, but they are still cleaned up transfers from questionably preserved 78s so don't expect perfect clarity.



Aside from Medtner's own compositions, the disc also includes Medtner's performance of one Beethoven piano sonata, no.23 in f, op.57, which is masterful.



Listening to Medtner's piano playing is like opening a door into a vanished world, the Late-Romantic musical world from which sprang Artur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz. Listening to this recording, I feel like I am touching the 19th century directly. The wild variations in tempo and dynamics in Medtner's piano playing are a revelation, both enraging and delightful simultaneously. Modern Western piano performances seem both self indulgent and rhythmically square in comparison. And Medtner's own music... Stunning. Fantastic.



This is an awesome recording which I listen to again and again. Highly Recommended."