{"id":3265,"date":"2012-04-24T21:12:16","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T02:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=3265"},"modified":"2012-04-24T21:12:16","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T02:12:16","slug":"salon-des-oublies-appreciating-the-enigmatic-bonbons-of-composer-nikolai-medtner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/04\/24\/salon-des-oublies-appreciating-the-enigmatic-bonbons-of-composer-nikolai-medtner\/","title":{"rendered":"Salon des oubli\u00e9s: Appreciating the enigmatic bonbons of composer NIkolai Medtner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
British pianist Hamish Milne is an eloquent advocate for Nikolai Medtner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve spent more than a month listening to Arabesques, Dithyrambs, Elegies and Other Short Piano Works<\/em>, a new 2-CD album of solo piano pieces by Russian composer Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) recently released by British pianist Hamish Milne<\/a> on Hyperion.<\/p>\n

Appreciating these short pieces is like trying to understand a charming new friend who, no matter how many times you go out for drinks and coffee together, remains elusively mysterious.<\/p>\n

Championed by Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin as well as Milne and a handful of Russian pianists, Medtner’s story is one of prodigious talent that, through personality and the vagaries of history, failed to make a wide and permanent connection. If it weren’t for a handful of champions, Medtner, who died in 1951, and his music would be pretty much forgotten.<\/p>\n

Milne is a remarkably elegant pianist — held in the higest regard in the U.K. and not that well known beyond — who has recorded Medtner extensively, and has also spent a lot of time researching the composer’s life, methods and compositional style.<\/p>\n

In an essay from 2003, Milne says that Medtner’s first composition, a setting of The Angel<\/em>, a poem by Mikhail Lermontov, says everything we need to know about this composer. Conveniently, the Op. 1 piano-solo setting of the poem is what opens the first of the two CDs on the new album.<\/p>\n

Here’s an English translation by Evgeny Bonver:<\/p>\n

The angel was flying through sky in midnight,\nAnd softly he sang in his flight;\nAnd clouds, and stars, and the moon in a throng\nHearkened to that holy song.\nHe sang of the garden of God's paradise,\nOf innocent ghosts in its shade;\nHe sang of the God, and his vivacious praise\nWas glories and unfeigned.\nThe juvenile soul he carried in arms\nFor worlds of distress and alarms;\nThe tune of his charming and heavenly song \nWas left in the soul for long.\nIt roamed on earth many long nights and days,\nFilled with a wonderful thirst,\nAnd earth's boring songs could not ever replace\nThe sounds of heaven it lost.<\/pre>\n
An exile from post-Tsarist Russia and an advocate of the Romantic aesthetic in a world that had left it behind, the partially self-taught composer, and seriously well-taught pianist became friends with fellow traveller Sergei Rachmaninov, but their music is vastly different.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a>To me, it sounds like Medtner’s short pieces are forever reaching for something much greater than their limited scope allows — a melody that needs another 16 more measures, a theme that could use another variation. The pieces on this new album are particularly exuberant, as if they contain far more life force than the notes are able to carry.<\/p>\n
Milne’s assured, totally committed interpretations further add to Medtner’s strange allure.<\/p>\n
I can only say — go buy this album, and allow yourself to be seduced. It could be the start of a nice friendship.<\/p>\n
In that essay, Milne quotes Medtner:\u00a0\u201cIt is impossible to talk about music. It talks itself, and does so precisely at the moment when words fail.\u201d<\/p>\n
With that in mind, here are medtner’s Romantic Sketches for the Young<\/em>, Op. 54, from an earlier recording of Milne’s. The pieces’ length, structure and variegated inventiveness are fully indicative of the treats in store on the latest album.<\/p>\n
For extensive background notes, as well as audio samples from the new album, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n