Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 5 in F sharp major, Op. 53

Although he wrote four symphonies and a small number of other orchestral works, the vast majority of Alexander Scriabin's (1872-1915) output was written for solo piano, and it is this aspect of his work that is presented on the two CDs in this set.

One of his early influences was the music of Chopin: the Piano Concerto that he wrote when he was just 24 years old is a perfect illustration of this. The effect of Chopin can also be detected in the early Preludes that begin the first CD.

It was during a six-year stay in western Europe, beginning in 1903, that his compositional style developed and became more individual and harmonically adventurous. The music that Scriabin wrote during the final five years of his life was all written for the piano and reflects his mature style, making his music some of the most advanced of the time. It was whilst on a visit to London in 1914 that Scriabin suffered a wound to his upper lip which eventually led to the blood poisoning from which he died a year later.

A warm welcome to Alexander Gavrylyuk on Piano Classics!

At only 26, Russian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk can already boast of an impressive international career. After having won several prestigious competitions (first prize Hamamatsu in Japan at 16, the First Prize A. Rubinstein Competition in 2005) he played with such orchestras as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Russian National Orchestra.

His last recital in the International Piano Series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw was a triumph and was recorded red hot by Piano Classics immediately after the event.

Gavrylyuk’s technique knows no limits, as is proven in the virtuoso Russian repertoire on this disc, but there is so much more than technique...his shaping of phrases, his boundless palette of pianistic colours, the characterisation of both the melancholic and brutal elements in this music: Gavrylyuk is a true artist.

The outstanding Russian soloist Alexei Volodin’s first recording for Challenge Classics (CC72354), released last year, was devoted to the music Chopin. His new CD brings together piano works by three of the most influential composers of the last two centuries. Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana was written in 18, whilst Ravel’s Miroirs and Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 5 are products of the first half of the 1900s.

Alexei Volodin was born in St. Petersburg in 1977, and began taking piano lessons there at the age of nine. A year later he moved to Moscow, and in 1994 he enrolled at the Moscow Conservatoire. During 2001 and 2002 he studied at the Theo Lieven International Piano Foundation in Como. Alexei Volodin has won several prizes at different international competitions, including First Prize at the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich in 2003.

Ravel composed the piano suite Miroirs in 1904-05 after he had joined the Société des Apaches, a group of ground-breaking young musicians, composers, music critics, poets, writers and painters, which included Igor Stravinsky, Florent Schmitt, Manuel de Falla and Maurice Delage. Miroirs is a musical tribute to them, and each of the five movements is dedicated to one of the members. Robert Schumann studied Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier intensively when working on the eight short pieces that make up his Kreisleriana, and consequently each individual movement is a prime example of formal discipline and structural coherence within the cycle as a whole. The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s enthusiasm for the mystic and poetic elements in the works of Wagner, Liszt, and Nietzsche led him to attempt to establish an all embracing, eternal and super human art form, and it is this philosophy that is the driving force behind music of his Piano Sonata No. 5.

This title continues the Goldenweiser School, the last of the three great teaching traditions to be covered in this comprehensive survey of the many great pianists who worked in Russia in the Soviet era. The bulk of the issues in THE RUSSIAN PIANO TRADITION will be divided into 'schools' which represent the three main teachers of this period - Neuhaus, Goldenweiser and Igumnov, - and their pupils.

One of the youngest pianists to be featured in this series, Victor Merzhanov is more a grand-pupil of Goldenweiser than a pupil, as his major professor was Samuil Feinberg. It seems certain though, that while studying with one of Goldenweiser's most illustrious pupils he would also have had contact with the great man. Merzhanov graduated from the Moscow conservatory in 1942 and, after war service, shared first prize in the 1945 All-Union piano competition with Sviatoslav Richter. He began teaching at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1947 and, at the age of 90, continues to teach and serve on competition juries today.

Merzhanov quickly became renowned as a Rachmaninov interpreter and his recording of the Third Concerto is one of the greatest, he also made the first recording of Prokofiev's Sixth Sonata. He was most prolific in the recording studio in the 1950's and his performances are characterised by peerless technique (witness the Liszt 'Paganini' Studies included here) and a generous, but never self-serving, emotional involvement with the music. Once again the quality of the playing revealed here shows that our view of who are the 'greats' of Soviet pianism has been very much dictated by those performers who had careers in the west. As this series of CDs has shown, Gilels and Richter were not isolated peaks; the likes of Oborin, Zak, and here, Merzhanov, were certainly their musical equals.