Medtner's First Concerto for Pianoforte and orchestra (1918)

Tchaikovsky, please!


I rather think that such an "honour" is hardly of relevance today, a quarter century and more since the collapse of that monstrous creation...


He does not; what a patronising and gratuitously insulting remark! (not that there's anything wrong with stevedores, of course, as long as they are not seated before pianos playing such repertoire as this).


The standard European/American spelling of his name is Medtner; he was of part German descent but considered himself Russian through and through. I must confess to some surprise at your concern about the spelling of his name, given your frequent recourse to bizarre name spellings, of which one appears in this post.


Medtner spent very little time in North America, on a concert tour of USA and Canada that had been arranged for him by his friend Rachmaninoff who was by then living in USA.


They are indeed - especially those names respectively Reminiscenza, Night Wind and, perhaps above all, Romantica; he feared that, as he believed the last of these to be among the most complex of his works, his première of it would likely cut little ice with its audience in Glasgow where he was invited to give it in a recital as part of the 1930/31 season of concerts presented by the Active Society for the Propogation of Contemporary Music, an organisation founded and masterminded by Scots composer Erik Chisholm (1904-65). Sorabji, who much admired Medtner as both composer and pianist, gave the première of his Opus Clavicembalisticum earlier in the same season for the same concert series. In the event, Medtner's performance of his Sonata Romantica in B flat minor was an immense success and gained him a standing ovation.

There's much else to admire in Medtner's music, too, since he rarely wrote below his best; these include three sonatas for violin and piano (of which the last is an ambitious work subtitled Epica and plays for around 50 minutes), many other solo piano works, three piano concertos, a piano quintet and a large collection of songs for voice and piano that are very different to but nevertheless the equal of those of Rachmaninoff (which says a lot for them).


This was indeed a most fortunate meeting of minds that resulted in Medtner recording much of his music so that we are left with documentary evidence of his superlative pianism as well as his music. Medtner was increasingly suffering from ill health at that time but still managed to record a great deal of work.


Who are "we"? I have no idea if Britain will see any kind of sense, not least because it's rather unrealistic to expect a country of more that 65 million people of all ages and many nationalities all to perceive the same "sense" in anything, but the "Common Market" long ago became the European Community and later the European Union as it is now, it was never a "yoke" (indeed, it required much determined persistence on Britain's part successfully to rebuff Charles de Gaulle's desire to keep it out of the EC) and, since what led to its foundation in 1957 only began during Medtner's final years, reference to it here is clearly as irrelevant as it is inappropriate.

As for reviving the British Empire - God forbid! (which, if He exists, He surely will). There were effectively two of these at different times in any case, but the latter was mercifully seen many years ago to have outlived any usefulness that anyone who might ever have thought it to have had and its colonial past in particular is, quite understandably, widely regarded as an historical embarrassment. As most of the "colonies", "protectorates" and the like that were once part of it have long since become independent states, that "Empire" will never and indeed could never be "revived" by Britain even were UK to leave the EU in the referendum due to be held three weeks today; all that's left are 17 territories which do not form part of the United Kingdom itself - fourteen British Overseas Territories and three Crown dependencies which together occupy a mere 1,727,570km2 and are populated by only some 260,000 people.


I cannot say, but this particular member things very highly of it indeed; he might have wilfully perceived himself to be almost an anti-modernist but his music, whilst all firmly tonal, has a marked individuality.

Then you have much to which to look forward; after a period of comparative neglect, he is very well represented on CD these days.


I doubt that britain will be any better with me as a part of it whether or not it remains an EU member state, but I have voted in the referendum, yes.

Whatever it might be for the conductor himself, it would not be "monstrous" for me to disparage it if doing so accorded to my personal opinion but, as it happens, I did not disparage it per se when writing that "I rather think that such an "honour" is hardly of relevance today, a quarter century and more since the collapse of that monstrous creation"; au contraire, I merely pointed out the obvious fact that it counts for little today if for no other or better reason than that the former Soviet Union collapsed more than a quarter century ago. That said, if indeed the conductor remains proud of it, in the light of the following in Wikipedia (if it can be trusted)

"In the October of 2012 issue of "Seven Arts" (Семь Исскуств) the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky recalled Fedoseyev's role to purge all Jews from the Moscow Radio Symphony (Большой Симфонический Оркестр, БСО). According to Rozhdestvensky, Fedoseyev's role was that of a willing participant in the anti-Semitic purge of all Jews from the orchestra." (see "Геннадий Рождественский". www.7iskusstv.com (in Russian), for those who are familiar with Russian)

one might well feel somewhat wary of some things of which this conductor apparently feels proud...


Apart from the obvious fact that there is almost no appetite for "World Government" (by and for whom?) and not the remotest likelihood that the present governments of the world's almost 200 nations could reach agreement to work towards the establishment of such a phenomenon, your statement makes no sense in practice in any case; how can the British Empire or the USSR be reformed (and by whom?) when they no longer exist? Many people say that the EU is unreformable but, be that as it may or may not, at least it exists!


I have no idea what you mean by this. What is "Empire milk and butter"? And who is it that has yet to forgive Britain for whatever it might be that you appear to allege that it has supposedly done?


Assuming that by "Her Majesty" you refer to Queen Elizabeth II, are you suggesting that she was in some way responsible for the change of governmental structure there in that year or at the very least unnecessarily turned a blind eye and deaf ear thereto? Fiji was a Crown colony for almost a century until 1970 when it became independenct (although it remained a Commonwealth member); I presume you to refer to the fact that, following a series of coups d'état thereafter, a republic was declared there in 1987, so what is it that you expected the Queen to say about this instead of remaining silent on it, as you accuse her of having done? To what in any case do you seek to ascribe contextual significance in respect of this remote group of some 330 Pacific islands of which around one-third are populated by well under a million people in toto? I have no idea what point you're trying to make here, still less why it is that you're trying to make it!


Against what and among whom?

And what in any case has all of this to do with the subject of this thread, Medtner, who left the Soviet Union permanently in its early days (albeit rather later than some who had quit it) and spent a large part of the remainder of his life in Britain?


Many thanks for posting the links to the performance and to the score of Medtner's Piano Quintet. I happen, however, to find it one of the very few disappointments in the composer's output, perhaps because he set so much store by it and thereb set up expectations which the work itself fails to fulfil. It's a fine piano quintet in its own right, without doubt - one of the better ones in the extensive repertoire for this ensemble, indeed - yet it seems to me to fall sadly short of the immensely high creative standards that Medtner demanded of himself and up to which he usually lived (if I may paraphrase a Churchillian cliché).