Mussorgsky: Impromptu passionné

Mussorgsky’s work is distinguished by a raw, even crude, realism, iconoclastic at times, favouring the primitive peasant culture over the gentrified; his harmonic language pointed forward to the twentieth century. At times his innovations surpassed his colleagues’ understanding and Rimsky-Korsakov took it upon himself to edit – sometimes recompose – some works in order to make them more “acceptable”. Not published in Mussorgsky’s lifetime, Pictures from an Exhibition was his magnum opus for piano, but he wrote several shorter works that are worthy of a hearing: some are recorded here. The full version of ‘Pictures’ as recorded here is the original manuscript version and not the more common later revision which is considered by many to be less effective overall.

Described by The New York Times as “a man whose nature was designed with pianos in mind”, Anthony Goldstone is one of Britain’s most respected pianists. A sixth-generation pupil of Beethoven through his great teacher Maria Curcio, Anthony Goldstone was born in Liverpool. He studied with Derrick Wyndham at the Royal Manchester College of Music (which later honoured him with a Fellowship), later with Curcio in London. He has enjoyed a career encompassing six continents, the Last Night of the Proms (after which Benjamin Britten wrote to him, “Thank you most sincerely for that brilliant performance of my Diversions. I wish I could have been at the Royal Albert Hall to join in the cheers”), very many broadcasts and seventy CDs (including the BBC issue of his London Promenade Concert performance of Beethoven’s fourth Piano Concerto). He has an adventurous approach to repertoire and has been praised by Vienna’s Die Presse for “his astonishingly profound spiritual penetration”.

In the last few years Goldstone has become known for his acclaimed completions and realisations of works for solo piano and piano duet by Schubert, and for two pianos and solo piano by Mozart, all of which he has recorded on Divine Art CDs.

This CD presents a selection of the less performed impromptus that span a period of nearly two centuries. Four of the works have been recorded for the first time and are by Godowsky, Bibalo, Volaj and Mazhara. The works by Volaj and Mazhara were commissioned by Margarita Glebov for this project.

Every disc of Alice Ader is awaited with baited breath by her fans: this one being no exception. From the first bars of Une Larme, Mussorgsky’s inner world is revealed in this new 2 CD set of the complete piano works. It includes the mighty Pictures at an exhibition plus Mussorgsky’s transcription of Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Alice Ader, the noted concert and solo pianist is equally at home in contemporary and classical music. She earned her diplomas from the C.N.S.M. of Paris (Unanimous First Prize in 1963) and the Viennese Academy 1970. From 1967 through 1970, she studied with Geneviève Dehelly and Jacques Février in France and with Bruno Seidlhofer in Austria. For Fuga Libera she has already given us her live Art of Fugue.

The Georgian pianist Nino Gvetadze was born in 1981 and studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Since winning the YPF National Piano Competition in 2004, she has appeared with many leading orchestras and performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Modest Mussorgsky’s turbulent and muddled life somehow enabled him to become one of the most visionary and innovative composers in Russia in the 19th century. ‘Art is not an end in itself, but a means of conversing with one’s fellow creatures’ he wrote in his autobiography. This view may in some way explain the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies in his music. He had been called a ‘barbarian’ by some of his colleagues, and even his friend and fellow member of ‘The Mighty Handful’ (the group of five leading Russian nationalist composers) Rimsky-Korsakov thought he lacked refinement.

His vivid tonal pallette was to become an important influence on composers such as Debussy and Ravel, the latter famously orchestrating Mussorgksy’s piano masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition. The original is the main work on this disc which includes all his extant works for solo piano. Much of his output for piano dates from his early years as a composer, and two piano sonatas, in E flat major and F minor, have sadly been lost.

New recording, containing pieces that are rarely recorded.

One of a series of releases highlighting the winners of the principal prizes at the prestigious YPF Young Pianist Foundation’s National Piano Competition in Holland.

‘A musician to be reckoned with.’ De Telegraaf