Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951), an outstanding pianist, was largely self-taught as a composer. He left his native Russia in 1921 after the Bolshevik Revolution, eventually settling in London and attracting support from the music-loving Maharaja of Mysore. Though his late-Romantic style recalls that of his close friend Rachmaninoff, Medtner drew inspiration from the past, above all from Beethoven. Try his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, the Sonata in G Minor, or songs such as “Elegy” from Four Songs, Op. 45 to hear how he marries the big emotions of late-19th-century Russian Romanticism with the more formal clarity of 18th-century German music.