There are few stranger, more recondite figures in the entire history of music than Nikolai Medtner. Recently he has been rescued from near oblivion by Hamish Milne, Geoffrey Tozer and Marc-Andre Hamelin in particular, who have, in their different ways, cast a penetrating and affectionate light on music which after repeated hearings subtly insinuates itself into the listener’s consciousness. The moods, particularly in the seventh volume of Geoffrey Tozer’s Chandos cycle, are primarily introspective, whether simply or floridly expressed. Most of the ideas, too, bear a family likeness suggesting a continuous return to a fabric or dreamscape of happier times and places; nostalgia was always central to Medtner’s haunting genius.
Tozer’s long and complex journey through these pages is always a labour of love rather than duty. For him the Third Dithyramb is ‘a hymn of angels’ and the third of the Op 26 Fairy Tales ‘perfection’. His verbal tribute is ideally matched in performances of unfailing mastery and warmth. His tempo for the second of the two Op 20 Fairy Tales allows every note of its menacing tread or chime (it is oddly subtitled ‘campanella’) to be heard. The delightfully ornate Op 55 Variations are spun off with a true sense of their greater accessibility and the Op 59 Elegies – rich, powerful, disconsolate and with a Brahmsian textural density – provide a magnificent close to his programme. The recordings are excellent and Tozer’s notes are invaluable, making Volume 8 an eagerly awaited event