Nikolaï Medtner

Mélodies oubliées

Vergessene Weisen opus 38
Danza festiva
Canzona fluviala
Vergessene Weisen opus 40
Danza col canto
Danza jubilosa
Vergessene Weisen opus 38
Canzona serenata
Vergessene Weisen opus 39
Meditazione
Romanza
Primavera
Canzona matinata
Sonata tragica

Arabesques

Drei Arabesken opus 7
Ein Idyll
Tragoedie-Fragment n°1
Tragoedie-Fragment n°2

Elena Filonova, piano

Production, Recording Engineer: Lubov Doronina.
Mastering: Pavel Lavrenenkov.
Recorded in Moscow, March 2004.

AR RE-SE 2005-9

Born into a Germano-Baltic family, Nikolai Medtner is one of the most unique personalities of Russian music. His life can be summed up as follows: studies at the Moscow Conservatory, exiled in Germany as early as 1921, then, in Paris and in London, a career split between piano performances and composition. In his book on piano music, Guy Sacre devoted more than twenty pages to Medtner, whom he situates: "naturally in the Moscovite camp who, far from the nationalism of the Five, practice a cosmopolitan art: a complicated way of saying that they have German influences." The influence of Brahms has not prevented the composer from being loyal to his native country. The Forgotten melodies which Elena Filonova has partially recorded (entirely for Opus 39) are inspired by Medtner’s reading of a poem by Lermontov, The Angel. In the arms of an angel, the small child hears celestial melodies and for the rest of his life tries to find them again. Medtner’s angel was, assuredly, a Russian angel…
The musician’s romanticism appears in his virtuoso piano writing, which could be compared to Rachmaninov’s, a friend and an admirer of his, but for the seemingly revolt-driven moments of rupture where the composer isolates himself in a universe without self-indulgence. This is where his grandeur lies: in being, at the same time, modern with his harmonic audacity, his rhythmic freedom, and romantic in his own, very personal way, with the sometimes "confession"-like character of his music, when he lets the "Russian angel" speak.
A student of Emil Gilels, who introduced her to Medtner’s work, Elena Filonova, who lives in France but often gives concerts in Russia, plays the Forgotten melodies and the Arabesques with a superb sonority, a deep understanding of these pages, and a power of conviction which are irresistible.

An intelligently composed program that could serve as an introduction to the Russian master: extracts from the three great cycles inspired by Lermontov’s poem, The Angel, a text that gives the key to the musician’s artistic inspiration. According to this poem, the artist’s existence is but a long quest to find the echo of celestial melodies heard at the moment of the birth of each being, when it is brought from the heavens to the earth by an angel. Festive, elegiac or fantastic dances, songs of serenity or jubilation, these Forgotten motives (1920) bear witness to a rare formal perfection. The beautiful counterpoint, the rhythmic complexity and the harmonic plentitude run together in a pianistic writing whose elasticity can be compared to that of Chopin’s or Schumann’s music. Elena Filonova’s playing possesses a remarkable clarity which allows for rather lively tempos without prejudice for the rich Medtnerian polyphony. She is an elegant pianist whose styled lines can be compared to those of the great American pianist Constance Keene in Rachmaninov’s Preludes (Philips). The slightly improvised musical profusion is thereby granted more cohesiveness, and this Apollinian approach highlights what the Russian composer implicitly owes to Beethoven. (...) Overall success of this record whose almost perfect taste and high quality prove to be great assets. One can only rejoice that new generations of pianists become interested in Medtner, who has suffered the reputation of "belated romantic" for too long.