RUSSIAN VOLUME 1 BALAKIREV GLAZUNOV KOSENKO

Vincenzo Maltempo BALAKIREV · GLAZUNOV · KOSENKO 20th Century Russian Piano Sonatas

MILY BALAKIREV: Piano No.2 in B flat minor Op.102 The Ukrainian and Viktor Stepanovych Kosenko (1896- 1. Andantino 6’47 1938) was born to an affluent military family in St Petersburg. Relatively 2. , moderato 5’34 forgotten today, despite a catalogue (covering the years 1910-37) embracing 3. Intermezzo, larghetto 3’59 concertos, chamber works, piano music and folk song arrangements, he 4. Finale, allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco 7’52 studied in with the pre-eminent Chopin specialist Aleksander Michałowski, whose own teachers had included Moscheles, Reinecke and : Piano Sonata No.2 in E minor Op.75 Tausig (1908-14). With the onset of the First World War, Konsenko moved 5. Moderato-poco più mosso 9’06 back to St Petersburg, where he was enrolled at the Conservatory (1914- 6. Scherzo, allegretto 6’22 18). Here his composition and playing briefly caught Glazunov’s attention 7. Finale, allegro moderato 9’47 and encouragement. On graduation Kosenko joined his family in , north-western (Richter’s birthplace – he was then three, living : Piano Sonata No.2 in C sharp minor Op.14 with his aunt), taking up appointments at the Music Technicum, becoming 8. Andante con moto 9’37 director of the city’s Music School, and co-founding the Leontovych 9. Moderato assai espressivo 5’04 Musical Society. He married in 1920. Nine years later - following a period of 10. Allegro vivo 5’59 burgeoning composition, publication and concerts but squalour, and poverty domestically and unsanitory conditions generally plus mounting tensions with the Stalin regime - he moved to Kiev, taking up a position as chamber Vincenzo Maltempo piano musician and analyst at the Institute of Music and Drama, his subsequent professorship transferring to the Conservatory in 1934. He died from cancer in October 1938 - not though before his tireless nationalist endeavours were recognised with the award of the Soviet Order of the Red Banner, bestowed personally by the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Khruschev.

Recording: 6 September 2017, 3 February 2018, Westvest Church, Schiedam, The Producer: Pieter van Winkel Engineer: Peter Arts Steinway D, tuned by Charles Rademaker Cover photo: Raffaele Battiloro ℗ & © 2018 Piano Classics Piano Classics is a trade name of In Zhytomyr Kosenko composed three piano sonatas, in B flat minor, Op 13 Testy, ‘tactless [and] despotic’ (Gerald Abraham), eventually forgotten by (May 1922), C sharp minor, Op 14 (June 1924), and B minor, Op 15 (1926-29, all but his inner circle, Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), together with the critic dedicated to ). Flickers aside in the Third, these have little Vladimir Stasov, was the founder, mentor and self-importantly, often harshly, to do with mystic Scriabin, early Prokofiev or political rhetoric but everything hands-on adviser of the Russian nationalist school, the Mighty Handful - in common with Slavic Romanticism and heart-on-the-sleeve emotion, comprising himself, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Don’t their grandiose gestures and nostalgic habitat ranging from Tchaikovsky to study the classics he used to advise, study Liszt. If we’re to believe Rimsky’s Rachmaninov via Russified Chopin and Liszt burnished with glints of song memoirs, however, his nurturing of the creative spark left something to be and dance steeped in Ukranian and Moldavian lore. Oceanically virtuosic desired. ‘With all his native mentality and brilliant abilities, there was one reminiscenza music of Golden Age hue and winged majesty, dynamically thing he failed to understand: that what was good for him in the matter of expanded. Contrasting its sub-divided single-movement companions, musical education was of no use whatsoever for others, as these others the Second Sonata is a tripartite design, with a central Moderato in E flat not only had grown up amid entirely different surroundings, but possessed minor. Its high-octane pianism, chamber-like voicings, and orchestrally utterly different natures; that the development of their talents was bound to imagined power-house octave, chordal and harmonic doublings, all point take place at different intervals and in a different manner.’ to a composer who must have been a ‘big’ performer, ebulliently spirited, He was a man rarely comfortable writing large-scale canvasses at a single equal to any commanding the Russian, European or American circuit of sitting: his First Symphony took over thirty years to reach completion. the ‘20s and ‘30s (the principal warhorse concertos were in his repertory). Though signed-off quickly, the Second Sonata (September 1905, dedicated Musically, melody and motifs, accenting starkness before sentimentality, are to Lyapunov), in the moodily post-Chopinesque ‘black’ key of the late to be had. Repetitive (architectural) elements likewise. Skeletally, too, there Russian Romantics, was even longer in the thinking and drafting - the first are intimations of a possibly psychological subplot in the shadows - the first sketches (a fugal epilogue in memory of Lermontov) dating from 1855, the movement’s (acidly plaintive) disperazione motto, the finale’s (determinedly second movement D major Mazurka, revised in July 1900, from 1856-57. On hopeful) alla marcia intrusions. But it’s in the Beethovenian exchanges a theme of wistful wandering, folk-like in nature, the opening Andantino of keys and triadic grammar, in the climaxing and resolution of tensions, journeys fugue, cadenza, sonata, variation and filigree, lyric glory to the arguments spiralling upwards, cadences settling downwards, that the fore. Evolution and development become blossoming rather than episodic essence and engine of the score is to be found. Kosenko inscribed the piece processes, the seams of the fabric blurred more than bared. Not so much to the Russian-Jewish pianist David Shor, who the year after its completion the ‘harsh sunlight and pagan voluptuousness’ of Islamey as the world and emigrated to Palestine, settling in Tel Aviv. serenity of the Eastern Orthodox church permeates its spirit, Edward Garden, the composer’s biographer, suggests, ‘where mosaics spread themselves out administrative and pastoral well-being, and numbering Shostakovich among in a magnificent plethora of delicate vision’. Transient allusions to Bach are his later students. In 1928, embittered by the consequences, hardship and graciously lit. The Mazurka is robust, heroic, glittering, fanciful, courtly before deprivations of New Order communism, and unwilling any longer to play rural, the larghetto Intermezzo a transition from D major to (root-suspended) political chess or become involved in factional infighting, he left his country, B flat minor, its combination of simple (mainly) two-part writing and richly ostensibly to attend the Schubert centenary commemorations in Vienna but pedalled illusion (implied, never indicated) placing it eloquently in that effectively to escape. Relinquishing his position at the Conservatory in 1930, tradition stretching from Chopin (and before) to Rachmaninov (and after). he made his home, ‘respected,’ Shostakovich was to write, ‘but not much The piano was Balakirev’s instrument (he studied originally with Dubuque, loved ... not really knowing for whom and for what he was writing’. His copious one of Field’s pupils) and in the Finale he unleashes all its possibilites and output, dating mostly from the period between the deaths of Mussorgsky (1881) iron-framed thunder, whispered tierce de picardie finish notwithstanding. and Scriabin (1915), included eight completed symphonies, five concertos, three Here is rhythmic virility and terpsichorean swagger, the steeply inclined ballets, a number of choral settings, seven string quartets, and a quantity of Caucasian ascent calling for athletic response and aristocratic certainty – a piano music. Bridging the chasm between Tsarists and Bolsheviks, Glazunov breathtaking foil to the cross-fertilisation and intellect of the first movement. was an artist of legendary pedagogy and picturesque personality, a man of Championing its universe, Leokadiya Kashperova (Stravinsky’s and physically gargantuan girth, a ‘Homeric’ drinker. Dividing opinion, less pioneer, Tcherepnin’s piano teacher) must have relished the experience. more reconciler, travelling a battle-scarred road from homeland to exile, he knew life in all its facets, from society riches to tenement rags. Aleksandr Glazunov (1865-1936) was born in St Petersburg. Showing a He dedicated his E minor Second Sonata (1901) to his early teacher and precocious aptitude for music, with a total recall and gift for reconstruction friend Nartsis Nartsisovich Elenkovsky [Jelenkowski], a former St Petersburg that was said to have been legendary, witness his supposed rescue job on student of Alexander Dreyschock (he of the famous left-hand octaves). Borodin’s Prince Igor, he was early on discovered by Balakirev, founding father Dating from the period between Scriabin’s Third and Fourth Sonatas, its late of the nationalist Five or Mighty Handful, before being taken up by Rimsky- Romantic climate and occasionally repetitious classicism is very different, the Korsakov with whom he studied composition and theory, and whose orchestral music looking back stylistically and harmonically to the big-boned fibre of arsenal was to be a life-long model. He also received encouragement from Brahms or, come the finale, the dotted-rhythm obsession and ebb-and-flow Liszt. Famous across Europe as composer and conductor, albeit an indifferent of Schumann in Fantasie mode. Polyphony and power, voicing and trajectory, one, he was appointed Director of the St Petersburg Conservatory in December the tensioned construction of conversation and caesura, of intimate salon 1905, devoting his energy for the next quarter of a century to its academic, vignettes among impassioned arenas of debate, decide the paragraphing and temporal pacing of the first movement. Nothing is left to chance, the fire VINCENZO MALTEMPO is checked, the undulating surges judged theatrically. Pagan sprites at play, the central C major scherzo is a chattering puissance challenge of largely Vincenzo Maltempo’s artistic personality finds an important place in the semiquaver double-notes, as daunting, delicate and devastating a toccata as contemporary wide and diversified music scene after his massive recordings one can imagine. The whole is cyclically unified, the initial germ of the first and recitals dedicated to Charles Valentin Alkan of which he is considered movement (falling fifths divided between right and left hands) returning to one of the most authoritative interpreter and connoisseur in the world. launch the finale, determine its dotted character, and underpin the fugue at Since 2009, in fact, he recorded the most important Alkan works for the its core. The maggiore resolution of the crowning pages, distantly beckoning label ‘PianoClassics’; this considerable work has attracted the attention of Chopin, contrasts this idea with the clipped patterns offset against a chorale- the most renowned international magazines such as Diapason, The Guardian, like transformation and broadening of the theme opening the scherzo. PianoNews, Gramophone and others where his recordings get the coveted ’5 Kashperova, the ‘Snow Maiden’ of Petersburg’s ‘Evenings of Contemporary Stars’. Andrew Clements (The Guardian) says about his playing: “Exhilarating, Music’, premiered the work in the spring of 1902. demonic, a real revelation!”, and Robert Nemececk (PianoNews) writes: © Ateş Orga 2018 “considering one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of this composer [Alkan] no other pianist as Maltempo has managed to dominate in a so well thought-out and orchestral way the enormous difficulties [of Alkan works]”. He recorded and played Alkan’s most important works and he is one of the very few interpreters who played the whole set of the “Douze études dans toutes les tons mineurs” Op.39 in one single recital (Yokohama, November 2013). As a result of his continuous work of rediscovering and promoting the forgotten Alkan music, he was awarded with the honorary membership of the “Alkan Society” in . Vincenzo Maltempo is defined as a thrillingly“ resourceful musician with formidable technique and intelligence” (Jeremy Lee), with a “sound like carved in marble” (PianoNews), his “phrasing so elegant, the never ostentatious virtuosity, his mastery of form and musical sense” (L’Osservatore Romano). Vincenzo is also praised by many contemporary great . Francesco Libetta considers him as “a glorious example of Mediterranean pianist” and Alexander Lonquich writes Schumann (PianoClassics 2014), to the music for Violin and Piano by Michele about him as “a pianist/ Esposito with the violinist Carmelo Andriani (Brilliant Classics 2014) and musician out of the ordinary to S. Lyapunov, with an important recording of his “12 Études d’exécution who is able to use his transcendante, Op.11” (PianoClassics 2017). All of them are prized with the natural virtuosity (so lucidly highest awards from the international press. “expressionist”), that he Vincenzo Maltempo international career sees him performing in the most improved attending the works important Festivals and theaters in Europe ( “La Fenice”, Cagliari of Liszt, for the discovery of “Teatro Lirico”, Spoleto “Festival dei due Mondi”, Liszt Festival in Raiding, the a hidden Nineteenth century’ “Raritäten der Klaviermusik” in Husum etc), America (Miami “International [...] He is also one of the only Piano Festival” etc), Mexico (“Festival Internacional de Piano en Blanco people that can do justice y Negro”), Asia. He regularly hold Masterclasses and he is invited as jury to the Alkan music and who member in National and International Competitions. His musical journey, seems to have no secrets for began in a very early age spontaneously in his family, is heavily influenced him […] And a last important by Salvatore Orlando which is pianist and teacher, pupil of thing: you still have the feeling and after continues with Riccardo Risaliti at the International Piano Academy that for him the instrument “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola. is a means and not an end Vincenzo Maltempo lives in his birthplace, Benevento. He currently teaches for itself”. The famous music at the Conservatory “Gesualdo da Venosa”, in Potenza, . critic Bryce Morrison on Gramophone, enhances the flamboyant and colorful playing comparing it to Horowitz, and Lorenzo Arruga - Italian music critic and writer - recognize in his “free and speaking phrasing, in his warm touch and in his loving attitude for the and the music” a deep liaison with the “old piano school”. In fact his discography, besides to Alkan, can count many other recordings dedicated to (“Klavierwerke”, Gramola, 2009, and the Complete Hungarian Rhapsodies, prized by Gramophone as “Editor’s Choice” in February 2017 and defined the“ finest I’ve ever heard” by P. Ruckert in his review on the same magazine), to Robert