A perfect pairing: Rachmaninov with his friend Medtner
Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano.
Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.
Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.
You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:
“Portraitures and caricatures: Conductors, Pianist, Composers”
here.
Pianist Alexander Paley brings together some rarely heard and nicely coherent pieces by Sergei Rachmaninov and Nikolai Medtner, close friends from their Moscow student days, in a new CD (La Musica LMU005). The 14 selections call for a wide range of moods and styles and the Moldavia-born Paley seems to relish the challenge. Towering technical feats aside, there is no sign of effort on his part.
Paley’s choice of this repertoire is a sign of his dedication to some of the rich but neglected Russian repertoire. His impeccable, sensitive playing deserves far more attention than he has attracted thus far.
All tracks from the album are sampled here.
Paley, a reserved but strong personality, has led a life equally mouvementée, defecting to the United States in 1988 and taking U.S. citizenship. He now divides his time between New York and Paris.
In this recording, Medtner’s A-minor sonata Op. 38, the “Sonata Reminisczenza”, opens with Paley’s light touch on a Schumannesque figure that gradually grows on itself and becomes alternately lyrical and grandiose. The single-movement sonata was written after the Bolshevik revolution and serves as a look back to lost times, when Medtner led a more comfortable, predictable life.
Paley follows the piece with the even more daunting, not to say inaccessible, Sonata No. 5 in G-minor Op. 22. Liszt can be heard in the subthemes and late Beethoven is not far away. Again, the technical challenges seem to pose no problem for Paley.
Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme by Chopin Op. 28 offer a fascinating look into the composer’s free-roaming mind, taking the very simple C-minor Prelude (every schoolgirl’s first taste of Chopin) and spinning it into a carnival of twists and turns. Composers from Bach to Schubert, to Beethoven, Liszt and up to Webern and Copland, have turned to the variation as a creative exercise. Rachmaninov’s fall somewhere in mid-field – on the cusp of modernity.
Paley introduces the theme with an ethereal feel, then goes on to 12 effusive and raucous versions. The ornamentation takes great liberties, dancing away from the melody and returning home, only to dance away once more. Paley never loses control of these flights, some of which are definitely “out there”.
Paley’s career trajectory has taken him around the world with his broad repertoire of solo, chamber and concerto works and his widely admired artistic and technical prowess. Also an active promoter of great music, his “Music at the Moulin” festival in Normandy is celebrating its 25th year. And the Alexander Paley Music Festival in Richmond, Virginia, stages its 19th edition in September.
Related article:
Alexander Paley interview: ‘Classical music is not foreverybody’
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