Nikolai Medtner

A close friend of Rachmaninoff, Medtner was a highly revered late-Romantic Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music, characterised by sweeping melodies, elaborate virtuosity, as well as passages of deep introspection, is subtle and somewhat elusive, but weaves its magic after repeated listening. Born in Moscow in 1880 into a family of German and Scandinavian extraction, he was largely self-taught as a composer, and made his breakthrough in 1903 with his first of 14 Piano Sonatas, the last of which he completed in 1937. Like Chopin, the piano remained the central focus of his creative endeavours, whether in the medium of small-scale compositions known as Skazki (Fairy-Tales, of which he composed 10 sets between 1904 and 1928); in the elaborate accompaniments to his numerous songs, setting both German and Russian poets; or in his three Piano Concertos (1914-18, 1920-27 and 1940-43), the only time when he wrote for orchestra. Medtner left his homeland after the Russian Revolution, but was unable to settle either in Germany or France, partly because his musical vision was out of step with the contemporary cultural climate in these countries. He finally moved to England in the mid 1930s where, thanks to the generous patronage of the Maharajah of Mysore, he was able to make commercial recordings of most of his major works starting in 1947; his final recording—of 14 of his songs with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf—was made a year before his death in 1951.