• Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) was born in Moscow. After piano lessons with his mother he entered the Moscow Conservatory where he had lessons from Pavel Pabst and Sergey Taneyev. He won the prestigious Anton Rubinstein Prize at age 20. A younger contemporary of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff he was destined for a brilliant pianistic career but he chose to concentrate on composition. In 1936 he settled in London where he spent the rest of his life teaching and composing till 1951.
• Medtner’s style is rooted in the 19th century, full-blooded romantic, with a highly personal harmonic and melodic language, often complex and dense, but hauntingly beautiful.
• This new recording presents the two Piano Sonatas Op. 25, the first a Fairy Tale Sonata, the second a colossal, enigmatic, fantastic, nocturnal work, which is considered by many to be not only Medtner's best work, but one of the best sonatas of the entire 20th Century. It was completed in 1911 and dedicated to Sergei Rachmaninoff, who immediately recognized its greatness. Under the title "Sonata" Medtner added a note: "The whole piece is in an epic spirit".
• Dina Parakhina is a Russian-born pianist and teacher. Piano Professor at the Royal College of Music since 2009, and College Fellow since 2019, Dina taught piano at the Central Music School in Moscow for sixteen years. She performs as a soloist with orchestras, makes recordings for CDs and radio, gives master-classes across the world, and sits on the juries of international piano competitions. Born in Sochi, Dina moved to Moscow without her family to study piano aged twelve. At the Central Music School, she studied under Professor Tamara Aleksandrovna Bobovich; at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Dina studied with Evgeny Malinin, a protégé of Heinrich Neuhaus.
