Est 1923

Medtner Piano Concerto No 1; Piano Quintet

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Nikolay Karlovich Medtner

Label: Hyperion

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 59

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: CDA66744

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 Nikolay Karlovich Medtner, Composer
Alexander Lazarev, Conductor
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Dmitri Alexeev, Piano
Nikolay Karlovich Medtner, Composer
Quintet for Piano and Strings Nikolay Karlovich Medtner, Composer
Dmitri Alexeev, Piano
New Budapest Quartet
Nikolay Karlovich Medtner, Composer
Medtner would have been both grateful and astonished by his present and ever-increasing recognition. Once dismissed as an unsatisfactory betwixt-and-between composer, one without a convincing personal voice who was overshadowed by Rachmaninov's greater glamour and accessibility, his time has truly come. For Dmitri Alexeev the First Concerto is Medtner's masterpiece, an argument he sustains in a performance of superb eloquence and discretion. Even the sort of gestures later vulgarized and traduced by Tinseltown are given with an aristocratic quality, a feel for a love of musical intricacy that takes on an almost symbolic force and potency, but also for Medtner's dislike of display. You may occasionally miss the torching brilliance of Demidenko's Medtner (his solo recital, 9/93, and the Gramophone Award-winning disc of the Second and Third Concertos, 4/92, also for Hyperion, are of unique authority) or, more specifically, Igor Zhukov's more blustering, devil-may-care virtuosity in his recording of the First Concerto, yet time and again Alexeev makes you pause to reconsider Medtner's quality, and his reserve brings its own distinctive reward. The early Abbandonamente ma non troppo has a haunting improvisatory inwardness and later, as the storm clouds gather ominously at 11'55'', his playing generates all the necessary electricity.
How thankful one is, too, for Alexeev's advocacy of the Piano Quintet where, together with his fully committed colleagues, he recreates music of the strangest, most unworldly exultance and introspection. Instructions such as poco tranquillo (sereno) and Quasi Hymn take us far away from the turbulence of the First Concerto (composed in the shadow of the First World War) and the finale's conclusion with glissando and tremolo for added effect, is wonderfully uplifting.
The recordings are judiciously balanced in both works, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Lazarev are as alert as they are sympathetic. Alexeev's own accompanying notes, with their reference to the strange paradox of Medtner's genius and his joy in the re-discovery of music ''imbued with the strength of his powerful spirit and the beauty he believed in'', provide a crowning touch to this brilliantly enterprising disc; the eighth, and certainly one of the finest, in Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series.'

Medtner Piano Concerto No 1; Piano Quintet

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1

Quintet for Piano and Strings

Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music. 

Stream on Presto Music | Buy from Presto Music

Gramophone Print

  • Print Edition

From £6.67 / month

Subscribe

Gramophone Digital Club

  • Digital Edition
  • Digital Archive
  • Reviews Database
  • Full website access

From £8.75 / month

Subscribe

                              

If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.