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Medtner Plays Medtner Piano Concertos No 2 3 (Testament)

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Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 2,Op. 50
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 3,Op. 60
3 Arabesques, Op. 7 Tragoedie-Fragment in A minor
4 Fairy Tales, Op. 26 - F minor
Nicolas Medtner pf
Philharmonia Orchestra/Issay Dobroven
Testament CD SBT1027 (77 minutes : ADD)

Reviewed: Gramophone 4/1994, Bryce Morrison
How grateful Medtner would have been for today's belated but intense recognition of his genius. Glib references to 'the Russian Brahms' (Medtner's first Russian listeners were baffled by the Teutonic elements of his writing), or a general feeling that he is a poor relation of Rachmaninov form a reductio ad absurdum. Medtner was, after all, a deeply personal composer and the ebb and flow of his romanticism was coloured by an initially unsettling, very Russian mix of the amiable and grotesque, or by the way so many outwardly conventional ideas are transformed into ''something rich and strange''.
The three piano concertos are among his finest creations. Seemingly diffuse they are subtly and intricately structured and have never been more aristocratically or persuasively performed than by the composer himself. Medtner was suspicious of pianists who used his music for even the least form of virtuoso excess, and listening to him in the Second's first molto cantabile a tempo, ma expressivo (1'50'') or the Third's dolce cantabile (5'48'') is to be made doubly aware of his haunting and bittersweet lyricism. The streaming figuration in the Second Concerto's Romanza at 4'40'' is spun off with deceptive ease, a reminder that while Medtner despised obvious pyrotechnics he was a superlative pianist (Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata and Liszt's Feux follets were central to his early repertoire).
So here, surely, is an ideal complement to Nikolai Demidenko's justly celebrated, hypnotically fiery and articulate accounts of these works on Hyperion (4/92). And I know that both he and and all other ardent Medtner specialists will want to join me in welcoming this vital and beautifully remastered reissue (the original recordings date from 1947). Two exquisitely played encores are included (the ambiguous poetry of the A minor Arabesque could be by no other composer) and Malcolm Binns's documentation is exemplary. The accompanying booklet includes photographs of Medtner and Rachmaninov (lifelong friends despite their differing fortunes), and the Maharajah of Mysore, whose immense generosity made the original recordings possible.'

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