Tchaikovsky: Album for the Young, Op. 39

It was Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Album fur die Jugend that inspired Tchaikovsky to start composition on his Children’s Album in 1878. He dedicated the set to his nephew Vladimir Davidoff (Bobik) who was 7 years old.‘For a long time I have been saying to myself that it would be a good thing to contribute, within the limits of my powers, to the enrichment of the piano literature for children, which is rather poor. I would like to compose a series of very easy little pieces with attractive titles like Schumann did’ he wrote to his patron Mme von Meck. In less than a week of writing these words he had completed the 24 pieces of his Children’s Album. Like Schumann’s works, there is nothing childlike about the music, rather it displays an adult mind totally understanding of a child’s view of the world, together with a tender nostalgia. Tchaikovsky’s Op.39 proved so popular that later Russian composers also composed works for children. In the Soviet period Prokofiev composed his Music for Children (1935), wonderfully fresh music far removed from dry didactic texts most children had for piano study. In 1947 Shostakovich composed his Children’s Pieces for his daughter Galina. Rather more closely related to traditional teaching pieces that Prokofiev’s Music for Children, they nonetheless instil rather charmingly the academic notion of a happy ‘major’ and a sad ‘minor’ by inverting it in A Merry Story in E minor, and a Sad Story in G major.

The international acclaim for Vassily Primakov's studio recordings during the past three years has been nothing short of phenomenal, with the pianist regularly compared to the great virtuosi of the past.

This new Primakov disc is the first in a series of live-concert recordings. The disc's oldest performance is from 2002-- Schubert's “Wanderer Fantasy”-- played when Primakov was 22. Primakov's performances of the great Russian composers have proven to be noteworthy, and this disc includes Tchaikovsky's rarely recorded Children's Album, Op. 39, as well as a powerful 2007 concert performance of Rachmaninoff's rarely recorded 1931 revision of his Second Sonata.

Alexander Goldenweiser was born in 1875 and studied at the Moscow Conservatoire with the great generation that included Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Medtner. Though a fine pianist, he quickly gravitated towards teaching and had an astonishing 55 year reign at his alma mater until his death in 1961. During this period he twice acted as the Conservatoire’s Director – from 1922-24 (as the first post-revolution director) and between 1939 and1942. Goldenweiser was to exert a profound influence upon more than 200 pianists among whom the most celebrated are Grigory Ginzburg, Samuil Feinberg, Rosa Tamarkina and Tatiana Nikolayeva (all of whom will be represented in this series) as well as Lazar Berman, Dmitri Bashkirov, Isabella Vengerova, Oxana Yablonskaya and Dmitri Paperno. During the last 15 years of his life Goldenweiser recorded quite prolifically but most of this work was for the radio and only released subsequent to his death. For LP he recorded all Rachmaninov’s two-piano music with his pupil Ginzburg, a fair bit of Russian chamber music and, as a solo player, the first complete recording of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces amongst other things, some of which are included here.

Recorded in 1954