8.112051 bk Gilels02_EU 26-03-2010 9:56 Pagina 4 GREAT PIANISTS • EMIL GILELS ADD Pyotr Il’yich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893): Alexander Konstantinovich GLAZUNOV Great Pianists • Emil Gilels 8.112051 Souvenir de Hapsal, Op. 2 (1865-1936): 1 No. 3. Chant sans paroles 2:50 Piano Sonata No. 2 in E minor, Op. 75 Recorded in Moscow in 1940; 8 I. Moderato 9:00 first issued on 78 rpm; CCCP 18101 9 II. Scherzo: Allegretto 6:09 0 III. Finale: Allegro moderato 8:38 Sergei RACHMANINOV (1873-1943): Recorded in Moscow in 1950; EARLY 10 Preludes, Op. 23 first issued on LP; Concert Hall Society 2 No. 5 in G minor: Alla marcia 3:10 CHS 1311 RECORDINGS • 2 Recorded in Moscow in 1937; first issued on 78 rpm; CCCP 5076/77 Sergey PROKOFIEV (1891-1953): 1937-1954 Piano Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 14 6 Songs, Op. 38 ! I. Allegro, ma non troppo – Piu mosso – 3 No. 3. Daisies (version for piano) 2:28 Tempo primo 6:16 Recorded in Moscow in 1945; @ II. Scherzo: Allegro marcato 1:52 first issued on 78 rpm; CCCP 13298/99 # III. Andante 5:01 $ IV. Vivace – Moderato – Vivace 4:25 Etudes-tableaux, Op. 39 Recorded in Moscow in 1951; TCHAIKOVSKY 4 No. 1 in C minor 2:50 first issued on 78 rpm; CCCP microgroove Recorded in Moscow in 1940; D 492/3 RACHMANINOV first issued on 78 rpm; CCCP 10606/07 The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33ter: Nicolas MEDTNER (1880-1951): % March 1:32 MEDTNER Piano Sonata No. 3 in G minor, Op. 22 Recorded in URSS in 1947; 5 I. Tenebroso, sempre affrettando – first issued on 78 rpm; CCCP 14754/55 Allegro assai 7:11 GLAZUNOV 6 II. Interludium: Andante lugubre 3:52 Producer: Jonathan Summers 7 III. Allegro assai 5:33 Audio Restoration Engineer: Ward Marston PROKOFIEV Recorded in Moscow in January 1954; Special thanks to Donald Manildi first issued on 33 rpm; Melodiya LP 02305/06 Emil Gilels 8.112051 4 8.112051 bk Gilels02_EU 26-03-2010 9:56 Pagina 2 Great Pianists: Emil Gilels (1916-1985) Festivals a month later as well as in Rome. Although USSR again. The Piano Sonata No. 3 in G minor, Op. Gilels played Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8, Op. 84, 22, had already been championed by another great Early Recordings 2 • 1937-1954 (of which he gave the first performance in September Russian pianist of a previous generation, Benno One of the greatest Russian pianists of the twentieth recordings made in the USSR from this period with any 1944) and No. 3, Op. 28, very frequently throughout Moiseiwitsch. Indeed, Moiseiwitsch, who was a century, Emil Gilels was born in Odessa in 1916. accuracy as access to recording session logs and the 1960s and 1970s it appears that he rarely played the personal friend of Medtner, recorded this work for Although his parents were not musicians by profession, discographical material is limited. Second Sonata in public but it was on his programmes HMV in London in 1943 (Naxos 8.110675). Gilels his father was an amateur musician with an excellent Gilels was, of course, strongly identified with the of the 1954 season. Gilels never again played the E performed this Sonata again in Kiev during the same singing voice. All the children played instruments and Russian repertoire. Around the age of seventeen he minor Sonata by Glazunov or any of his other works. month but that appears to be the last performance he were often taken to concerts and the opera by their gave his first performance of the Piano Concerto No. 1 The first time Gilels performed a work by Medtner gave of it, although he did play the Sonata in A minor, father. At the age of six Emil was taken by his half- in B flat minor, Op. 23, by Tchaikovsky, a work that in public was at a concert at the Moscow Conservatory Op. 30, and the Sonata Reminiscenza, Op. 38 No. 1, sister to begin piano lessons with Yakov Tkach, a pupil was associated with him throughout his life. Gilels’s in January 1954. Performances of music by the émigré during the late 1960s. of Raoul Pugno. In 1929 Bertha Reingbald, a teacher first recordings were probably made in 1934 rather than Medtner were forbidden in the USSR until after from the Institute of Music and Drama in Odessa, heard 1935 as previously thought, and a few years later at his Stalin’s death in 1953. However, at this time Gilels Thanks to Judith Raynor for providing important the twelve-year old Gilels’s début and was greatly third recording session for Melodiya, he recorded a championed Medtner’s music and a month before the biographical information impressed with the young boy. She became his teacher Russian work for the first time – the Prelude in G concert even published an article in Sovetskaya Muzyka and, although he was too young to enter the National minor, Op. 23 No. 5, by Rachmaninov. Gilels did not (December 1953), in which he pleaded for the © 2010 Jonathan Summers Competition of the Ukraine in Kharkov, Gilels’s play a great deal of Rachmaninov’s works but he had composer’s music to be studied and performed in the playing at the time of that competition resulted in a played this one at a concert at the Moscow scholarship in 1931 from the Ukrainian government. Conservatory in March 1937 and continued to play it Reingbald then prepared Gilels for the All-Union throughout his career incorporating it into a group of Competition for Performing Musicians which he won four Preludes which he played frequently throughout in 1933 at the age of sixteen and immediately took on the 1970s. At his next recording session, in 1940, many concert engagements for which he was not Gilels recorded a handful of encore pieces by Brahms, adequately prepared as he had not had time to develop Liszt, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. Also Available his repertoire. He returned to Odessa and Reingbald, The Rachmaninov work on this occasion was the staying with her until the summer of 1935. It can be Etude-Tableau in C minor, Op. 39 No. 1, and was new said that Tkach provided a purely technical training to his repertoire; he played it in Kharkov in November whilst Reingbald instilled the musical attributes; Gilels of that year, but rarely performed it again. At the same said of her, ‘At that time, in fact, she was my musical recording session Gilels recorded the early work of mother.’ In 1935 after graduating in Odessa, Gilels Tchaikovsky that opens this disc while five years later moved to Moscow to study with Heinrich Neuhaus at he recorded Rachmaninov’s own transcription of his the Moscow Conservatory. song Daisies. In 1936 Gilels came second to Yakov Flier in the On the 3rd March 1950 Gilels gave a recital of International Piano Competition in Vienna, and two Russian music at the Great Hall of the Moscow years later won the prestigious Ysaÿe Competition in Conservatory in which he played Glazunov’s Piano Brussels. The outbreak of World War II prevented his Sonata No. 2 in E minor, Op. 75, Prokofiev’s Piano American début in 1939, and the first time he played Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 14, the Six Piano Pieces, outside the Soviet Union after the War was in Hungary Op. 19, by Tchaikovsky and Balakirev’s Islamey to in 1946. He then performed in Czechoslovakia and finish the published programme. As one of his three Poland in 1948, and he first played in the West in 1951 encores he played the March from The Love of Three 8.111350 in Italy. Oranges by Prokofiev, a work he had recorded three The recordings on this compact disc were made in years before and which became a favourite encore. The the USSR and all come from the first stage of Gilels’s same composer’s Piano Sonata No. 2 was recorded in career. It should be noted that it is difficult to date May 1951 and he played it at the Florence and Bologna 8.112051 2 3 8.112051 8.112051 bk Gilels02_EU 26-03-2010 9:56 Pagina 2 Great Pianists: Emil Gilels (1916-1985) Festivals a month later as well as in Rome. Although USSR again. The Piano Sonata No. 3 in G minor, Op. Gilels played Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8, Op. 84, 22, had already been championed by another great Early Recordings 2 • 1937-1954 (of which he gave the first performance in September Russian pianist of a previous generation, Benno One of the greatest Russian pianists of the twentieth recordings made in the USSR from this period with any 1944) and No. 3, Op. 28, very frequently throughout Moiseiwitsch. Indeed, Moiseiwitsch, who was a century, Emil Gilels was born in Odessa in 1916. accuracy as access to recording session logs and the 1960s and 1970s it appears that he rarely played the personal friend of Medtner, recorded this work for Although his parents were not musicians by profession, discographical material is limited. Second Sonata in public but it was on his programmes HMV in London in 1943 (Naxos 8.110675). Gilels his father was an amateur musician with an excellent Gilels was, of course, strongly identified with the of the 1954 season. Gilels never again played the E performed this Sonata again in Kiev during the same singing voice. All the children played instruments and Russian repertoire. Around the age of seventeen he minor Sonata by Glazunov or any of his other works.