Another release of the Anthology of Piano Music by Russian and Soviet Composers features works
of the late 1950s and the first half of the 1970s by composers of ‘traditional’ school. Nevertheless, the
listeners will find a lot of real surprises on this disc.
It opens with a once famous Rondo by Dmitri Kobalevsky he composed for the First Tchaikovsky
International Competition as an obligatory programme for the pianists in the second round. Alemdar
Karamanov’s naïve and romantic Variations showcase his music from a peculiar angle while he is better
known as an author of monumental biblical symphonies.
The piano sonatas by two prominent representatives of the Leningrad composing school Boris
Tishchenko and Boris Arapov are true gems of this release. They are complimented with compositions
by the authors from the former Soviet republics such as Mikhail Skorik (Ukraine) and Yuri Nikolayev
(Uzbekistan).
