Medtner : Complete Works for Violin & Piano

Album review

Although Nikolai Medtner's work for solo piano is reasonably well-known among fairly well-read music lovers, his music for violin and piano remains quite absent from concert halls and record collections. That's a real shame, because among them there are so many gems waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. Medtner, remember, might have been born in Russia in 1879, but he spent half his life in exile after the Revolution, first in America and then in England, where he would die in 1951; disinclined (to put it lightly) to follow the avant garde (including the avant-garde of Stravinsky or Debussy!), throughout his life he would be wedded to tonality, to melodic art, and the same tradition that Rachmaninov followed. His three great sonatas for violin and piano date respectively from 1904 for the First (revised before its first performance in 1911 but in its fundamentals it remains post-romantic); the Second only in 1925, while the composer was staying in France; the Third in 1939, written in his modest London dwelling – because Medtner spent the end of his career in almost-total obscurity, with the exception of the Maharajah of Mysore, an unstinting but sadly impotent champion of his music. The listener will note that as he advances in maturity, the composer increases the scope of his discourse, rather than reducing it: the First Sonata is only half as long as the Third, but we're not complaining. Alongside these three sonatas, Nikita Boriso-Glebsky on the violin and Ekaterina Derzhavina on the piano give us some other pieces by Medtner for the same group of instruments: the Canzonas and the Nachtgesänge ("night songs"), which underline just how much the melody was central to his conception of music. © SM/Qobuz

Details of original recording : Recorded 27.-30. 3. 2017, Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Cologne (Co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur)