Unser neuer Gesamtkatalog

Sergei Rachmaninov: Préludes op. 32/10 & 32/12, Etude op. 39/5 · Préludes op. 23/2 & 23/10
Alexander Skriabin: Fantasy op.28 · Prélude for the Left Hand op. 9/1 · Nocturne for the Left Hand op. 9/2
Nikolai Medtner: Two Fairy Tales op. 20
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: “October” & “January” from “The Seasons” op. 37b
Sergei Prokofiev: Sonata No. 7 op. 83
Benjamin Moser, piano

Benjamin Moser has selected an anthology of Russian piano music for his CD debut. With this release, he introduces a piano repertoire chapter that is particularly dear to his heart as it has accompanied him in a special way since childhood. The selection of works by Medtner, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Skriabin und Tchaikovsky mainly offers pieces that are rather seldom heard yet also a few more popular compositions, such as four Rachmaninov Préludes plus Prokofiev’s great Sonata No. 7. Benjamin Moser was born in Munich in 1981. He started studying piano with Michael Schäfer at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich and is currently studying with Klaus Hellwig in his master class at the University of the Arts in Berlin. In 2007, he won the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition as well as the Young Concert Artists’ Competition in New York.

Russian Piano Music

Benjamin Moser writes about the works on this CD and the overall concept and feelings that went into their selection: For years, I have had an intensive preoccupation with Russian music – my interest began as far back as my childhood. All of the composers recorded here are linked to or have more or less direct relationships with each other.

For me, the attraction of this compilation is discovering the commonalities and interrelationships, but also the individual characteristics of each work.

The dominant theme here is the extreme emotional range of the music: love, sorrow, hope, desperation, longing, joy, tragedy, heroism… the list is endless.

All of the works on this recording are equally important to me. Even if virtuosity is an important aspect, I principally try to use this in service of the music, never the other way around.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943):

“In my compositions, I have never consciously tried to be original, romantic, nationalistic or anything else. I just write down the music that I hear in myself, and as naturally as possible.” This was Sergei Rachmaninov’s reaction to various accusations that in his opinion were quite antiquated.

Fundamentally, it was the Prélude in C-sharp Minor that had instantly made the 19-year-old composer famous. On the other hand, it simultaneously contributed to misunderstandings about his music: it was criticized as too monstrous, too light, too sentimental.

Circa ten years later, he composed the Préludes op. 32 in less than two weeks. In this case, Rachmaninov was primarily interested in forming images in tones. The Prélude in G-sharp Minor was meant to represent a lonely winter landscape, above which a melody of yearning for a far-away homeland seemingly floats.

The Prélude in B Minor is considered to be Rachmaninov’s favorite. He summarized it himself with one word: return.

A fter submerging into a seething kettle of emotions and passionate tragedy, the Etude in E-flat Minor op. 39, No. 5 only reaches a state of deliverance at the very end.

A declaration of love that needs no words can be heard in the Prélude in G-sharp Major op. 23, No. 10. This piece is almost antithetical to op. 23/2, which triumphantly and majestically closes the Rachmaninov segment of this recording.

Alexander Skrjabin (1872–1915):
After the successful – but not stunning – completion of his studies at the Moscow Conservatory, Alexander Skrjabin found that if he wanted to succeed as a concert pianist in a musical world characterized by intense competitive pressure, he would have to submit himself to a rigorous training program of his own devising. Unfortunately, his plan backfired after a very short time, leaving him with distressing physical difficulties – which later led to psychological problems as well.

The pianist and composer thus saw himself confronted in 1893 by tendonitis in the right hand. His defiant reaction to his doctors’ opinion that he would never recover from this condition was to compose two works exclusively for the left hand.

At this point in time, however, the young composer of op. 9 could not know that these compositions would bring him recognition and prestige as a composer and cause his breakthrough in America twelve years later. Although born of desperate need, they helped Skrjabin overcome his crisis with musical means and thus radiate hope despite his melancholy while composing them. The orchestral texture of the Fantasy in B Minor, op. 28, composed circa seven years later, makes it one of Skrjabin’s pianistically most demanding works.

The main theme in the middle register is literally ripped apart by octaves moving counter to each other, reaching the instrument’s extremes after only four measures.

The secondary theme also uses the entire range of the instrument in order to form a “multi-storey organ composition”.

This “sonata without development”, as it was later called by musicologists, was not premiered until six years after it was published.

Nikolai Medtner (1880–1951):
“In my opinion, you are one of the greatest composers of our time,” said Sergei Rachmaninov to his colleague, the ethnic German-born piano virtuoso and composer Nikolai Medtner. It was also Rachmaninov who exerted himself on behalf of his friend, organizing a concert tour of America for him, for example. This tour – in contrast to Medtner’s popularity in his own country – did not go well, however.

Only later, when he was in exile in England, did Medtner’s works began to attract international attention.

“…as though begging someone with smoldering intensity…” was Nikolai Medtner’s instruction to his pupils on how to perform op. 20 No. 1 – this miniature, which despite its length of barely three minutes resembles an outpouring of all sorrow and pain in the world, compressed onto the tip of a needle.

Its counterpart, op. 20, No. 2, on the other hand, is a virtual explosion. This ominous episode, Campanella, is meant to be played without any rubato whatsoever, according to Medtner. The piece is less the story of a bell, but is a story of “havoc and terror” told by the bell’s peals. Despite its pulsating, almost percussive rhythms and inexorable hardness, this piece has little in common with the virtuosity of its time. The musical individualist Medtner had a lifelong aversion to such virtuosity – in great part to emphasize his contempt for contemporary composers like Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

The later name Fairy Tales fails to show the origin of the poetic inspiration that Medtner got from such authors as Pushkin, Shakespeare and various Russian poets.

One of the composer’s contemporaries appropriately declared the collection to be “tales of personal experiences, of the inner conflicts in the life of a person”.



P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840–1893):

The impulse for Tchaikovsky’s piano cycle The Seasons came from Nikolai Bernard, publisher of the newspaper “The Novelist”. He commissioned the composer to write a short musical episode for every month in the year 1876. The publisher hoped by this to persuade readers not to miss any issue of the newspaper.

Every piece was preceded by a verse by a famous Russian poet that was meant to serve the listener as a sort of anchor, a fixed point from which his or her imagination could run free.

More important than any introductory word, however, seemed to be the various moods, which didn’t only point to the constant changes in nature, but likewise to humans themselves, and in the manner of a simile, to the path they took through life. January: at the fireplace is one of the wintery daydreams and thus part of the “small radius of feelings” that would one month later be contrasted by the turbulence of Carnival. Tchaikovsky’s October: fall song is likewise elegiac, but tiredly strives downwards and with more pain. The bass line hardly has the energy to separate itself from the tonic, even when the melody moves harmonically in dominant regions. The bass lies as though paralyzed and seems to constantly drag down the main line – which at first tries to surge upwards – until it is suspended in the middle range. Here, however, Tchaikovsky masterfully gives the line support from a second line that is shifted by an eighth-note and which contributes to “saving” the main line through its own rhythmical individuality.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953): “That is not art, that is life itself,” countered poet Vladimir Mayakovsky to all those who were completely overwhelmed by the almost ecstatic effect of the music of the young Prokofiev, titling the composer as a “crazy man” and his music as “futuristic katzenjammer”. The composer was no radical, however, but a curious musician who danced among all styles and rang in an early harmonic avant-garde.

This and his interest in oppositions are very apparent in his Sonata No. 7, composed during a period of three years. The composition is directly related to the events of the time. The scene of the first movement is World War II. The raging of the music evokes images of marching soldiers, gunfire and a hail of bombs as well as the spread of rage and fear, which the secondary theme tries to intercept with wistful reminiscence. The following Andante caloroso seems like a vague remembrance of quieter days, like a fairy tale – warm, simple and melancholy, a short period of calm – before reality breaks in again in the middle section. Bells peal over the pictures of human sorrow, the vision from before comes up once again before sinking into nothingness.

The final movement resounds with rolling tanks, relentless and merciless, devastating everything in their way – the complete destruction of the world.