Just about three years ago, Radu Lupu gave us a Humoreske as likely to haunt the memory as Richter’s. And now comes another Russian who, even if not quite as persuasive, still opens one’s ears anew to the wealth and depth of feeling hidden beneath this work’s ambiguous title. The strongest possible contrast between the Florestan and Eusebius in the composer’s make-up would seem to be Demidenko’s primary aim, the former sometimes irascible in impetuosity – with occasional loss of tonal refinement, and certainly of textural clarity in faster figuration – in the resonant acoustic of St George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol. His Eusebius is for the most part wooingly poetic. But beautiful though that episode is (at the start of track 2), with a mysterious inner voice written on a third stave, it would be wrong not to mention that Demidenko takes the liberty of playing it twice as slowly as Schumann’s own, prescribed hastig marking.
In the eight Novelletten of much the same period, I particularly enjoyed Demidenko’s awareness of Schumann’s attempted escape from the sharper pangs of separation from his all-too “Distant Beloved” into a world of make-believe. With nimble lightness of finger and beguiling lyrical charm, he gives what could be described as a fancifully Gallic rather than an earnestly Teutonic reading, wholly disguising any suspicion of over-repetitive patterning. But the deeper import of the familiar falling-five-note ‘Clara’ motif towards the end of the last is most touchingly revealed.'