Few composers have divided opinion more sharply than Nicolas Medtner(1880-1951). For long dismissed as an outdated conservative, his music 'a declaration of love in the language of the First Empire,' his distinctive voice later surfaced, deeply committed in both public performance and on record. This occurred most notably from Hamish Milne, whose Russian tour, devoted principally to Medtner, prompted many of Moscow's musical citizens to comment, 'it takes an English pianist to remind us of what a great composer we had in Russia.' Marc-Andre-Hamelin's 4 CD album of the complete Piano Sonatas is another instance of reclame on a grand scale. Horowitz( who played Medtner extensively during his early Russian career but with only a single Fairy Tale on record), Moiseiwitsch, Gilels, Demidenko, Earl Wild, Steven Osborne, Stephen Hough, Geoffrey Tozer(5 CDs), Louis Debargue and Yvgeny Sudbin are further names that create an extensive list. Let no one say that Medtner is unrepresented.
And yet if such plenitude suggests popularity, the reverse is true. Medtner neither aimed at nor desired what the critic David Murray called 'Rachmaninov's 'comfortable liberality.' For many, his elaboration can make you beg for 'more matter and less art. Yet for others his works are not a note too long. Predictably, his was a private rather than public success.
For Yvgeny Sudbin 'fashions come and go but Medtner's music is for eternity.' More cautiously, for Ernest Newman, 'Medtner does not make an immediate appeal to the man in the street, but it certainly grows on the musician.' For Hamish Milne Medtner was a 'committed conservative and traditionalist, characteristics that made him pour scorn on other more outgoing or forward-looking composers. For him Richard Strauss was 'a talentless numbskull.' Stravinsky, Schonenberg, Wolf('a forced celebrity'), Prokofiev and Busoni were all similarly despised, though he showed enthusiasm for Arnold Bax. In my own case there are certain works of Medtner's that haunt the imagination, heard 'long after they are heard no more;' the menacing tread of the Fairy Tale or 'Skazka'(to give it its true Russian name) in B minor, opus 39 No 3, the 'Alla Reminiscenza' opus 38 and the tempestuous end to the 'DIthyramb.
PR's 'Nicolas Medtner, the complete solo recordings(including the First Violin Sonata with Cecilia Hansen) and Beethoven's 'appassionata' Sonata provide a golden opportunity to re-access this enigmatic genius and to listen with awe to playing which is that of a transcendental mastery. Here is a reminder that Medtner, as a pianist, became a Gold Medallist at the Moscow Conservatoire prompting his principal teacher to claim that he should have been given a 'Diamond Medal. Whether in the whirling measures of the 'Danza festiva,' joining Moiseiwitsch in the Round Dance for two pianos or in the E minor Skazka opus 14 No 1(March of the Paladin'), where a simple idea is tossed hither and thither, you will marvel at playing as natural as it is supreme.
Finally, there is Beethoven's 'appassionata' Sonata where if others are of greater temperamental force few are as musical. More thoughtful than barn-storming this includes a central 'Andante con moto' flecked with personal but never obtrusive touches. And if the failure to honour the repeat in the finale is regrettable, this is a golden and invaluable issue.
Bryce Morrison