Anton Batagov SUNNY NIGHT

SUNNY NIGHT

Alexander Buzlov / Lukas Geniušas CELLO SONATAS

CELLO SONATAS

Alena Baeva / Persimfans MENDELSSOHN - SCHUMANN Violin Concertos

VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Andrey Gugnin / Vadym Kholodenko / Lukas Geniušas DEDICATION TO VERA GORNOSTAYEVA

DEDICATION TO VERA GORNOSTAYEVA

Ludmila Berlinskaya / Arthur Ancelle BELLE ÉPOQUE

Melodiya presents Belle Époque, a new album recorded by the piano duet of Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle. The album is named after the period of time between the late 19th and early 20th centuries in France when science, arts and economy were flourishing in Paris. The Exposition Universelle held in 1900 with previously unseen splendour and scope attracted millions of visitors. However, the Paris salons were the major points of attraction - the most serious issues of life and arts, literary and artistic novelties were discussed there with ease of small talk. And indeed, music played a central part in that special environment. Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle, who have successfully performed together for many years, offer a fascinating musical tour of Paris. The piano duet presents music of the 'Beautiful Era' written by French composers - Cécile Chaminade, Charles Koechlin, Louis Aubert and Reynaldo Hahn. Claude Debussy's En blanc et noir concludes the album. Its music reflects the tragic reality of the war that buried the Beautiful Era forever.

Polina Osetinskaya SHOSTAKOVICH 24 Preludes, Op. 34 - Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 61

“A master jeweller. In her subtle, if not to say refined, refined interpretation the composer appeared as a philosophical intellectual, and it is thanks to these pensive and critical interpretations that Polina Osetinskaya proffers that Shostakovich’s music remains topical and even highly relevant art.” 

The life of pianist Polina Osetinskaya can be divided into two stages. The first – that of “wunderkind” (a word that Polina herself cannot abide) – was when Polina performed as a girl in huge halls filled with excited sensationalists. The second, which has continued to the present day, is essentially her victory over the first. It is both a reference to serious performing and to exacting audiences.

Polina Osetinskaya PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY The Seasons - Children's Album

Polina Osetinskaya started to play on stage at the age of six. At eight, she performed with an orchestra (at the hall of the Vilnius Philharmonic Society). She finished the lyceum school of the St. Petersburg Conservatory where she studied with the famous teacher of the Leningrad piano school Marina Wolf (she attended her class at the conservatory as well) and then took a course in Moscow with professor Vera Gornostayeva. The pianist believes that period of her life and studies in St. Petersburg, when she matured both musically and spiritually, was a true beginning of her artistic career. Today, Polina Osetinskaya is a winner of a Triumph award and active concert musician. She performs in Russia and overseas and regularly takes part in prestigious international festivals. She has performed with some leading orchestras and collaborated with well-known European conductors, including Saulius Sondeckis, Teodor Currentzis, Tugan Sokhiev, Vassily Sinaisky, Thomas Sanderling and Andrei Boreiko. The pianist’s repertoire comprises numerous works by contemporary composers that she intentionally combines with classical music in her concert programmes. Her interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s popular piano cycles are directed at radical revision of the customary renditions. Performing some of the composer’s pieces since she was a child, she, in her own words, has just gained an informed and deep insight into his music. Tchaikovsky in an inseparable unity of “human” and “musical” is a deeply tragic personality who was acutely aware of his loneliness and unachievable happiness. That is how Polina Osetinskaya interprets the composer’s inner world leaving no true judge of music untouched.

Olga Andryushchenko 20th CENTURY PIANO WORKS

Olga Andryushchenko was born in Moscow and educated at the Central Special Music School, and the Faculty of Historical and Modern Performing Arts of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory under Alexei Lubimov. She also studied organ. She completed her postgraduate studies at the same conservatory, and was also a DAAD scholarship-holder at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik.

She has won a number of important prizes and awards, including the 4th International Piano Competition “Franz Schubert and the Music of Modernity” in Austria (2000), the Premium Piano Seiler 2nd International Piano Competition in Germany (2001), the Premio Vanna Spadafor International Piano Competition in Italy (2004), the Bach Competition in Leipzig (2006), the Musica Antiqua International Fortepiano Competition in Belgium (2007), the A. Scriabine International Piano Competition in Paris (2008), the N. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Paris (2008), and the Fortepiano Competition in Schloss Kremsegg (2011).

She was a soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic Society (2002–2004), and performs both as a soloist and in ensembles, playing piano, organ, fortepiano or harpsichord. She has also given a number of piano recitals and played with orchestras in many cities of Russia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Italy, the United States, Belgium, Finland, Great Britain, Canada, France, Japan and elsewhere.

Shchedrin plays SHCHEDRIN

Rodion Shchedrin embarked on a composing career at the dawn of the second half of the 20th century, and since then has been actively creative. Shchedrin is the happy owner of a gift that combines a topical music language with traditional elements of Russian music culture, which let him easily fit in with the global music space and, at the same time, remain an artist with strongly pronounced national attributes of style. While Shchedrin has created remarkable works in virtually all music genres, his relations with piano music are special. A student of the famous professor Yakov Flier, who was a brilliant soloist and teacher, Shchedrin continues the glorious traditions of the Russian school. His concert performances and recordings of his own works have always been bright events, and have attracted the attention of thousands of music lovers.

Anton Batagov BACH

Firma Melodiya presents a recording of J.S. Bach’s Partitas performed by Anton Batagov.

Johann Sebastian Bach and Anton Batagov. Who could ever think until recently that these names would cross? A promising pianist, prize-winner and Tatiana Nikolayeva’s alumni, he refused the anticipated career in his early youth and chose to continue with quite different music. The first performer of minimalist music in this country and a composer with a distinctive style, he resumed his “classical” performances not long ago. However, he refuses to keep a beaten path again.

As a principled antagonist of “authentism,” he plays any music in a poignantly contemporary fashion, sensing the breath of today in it. There might be something that creates an affinity between him and Glenn Gould, but the great Canadian pianist sensation and reading of Bach was totally different. Batagov hears Bach in a different way, drastically changing tempos, articulation and strokes as he repeats.

“Each note, each intonation, each chord of Bach’s music carries the truth next to which all the rest is inessential, therefore it sounds uncompromising and at times even merciless despite its blinding beauty. There is no path to light that wouldn’t run over Calvary,” he assumes.

His religious rendition of Bach’s partitas (he perceives No.4 as a Christmas mystery, and No.6 as a reflection of the Holy Passion) only naturally includes an arrangement of the chorale Jesus bleibet meine Freude played by the pianist between two cycles as a connecting link and dramatic core of the recording.

Anton Batagov recorded Bach’s music on the grand piano manufactured by Bösendorfer of Vienna (now a subsidiary of Yamaha) in a room of ZIL Culture Centre, a memorable location in Moscow where the necropolis of Simonov Monastery used to be.

“Batagov exploded the entire structure and texture of partitas, split them into atoms. After a ‘big bang,’ when the dance element disappears completely, a new universe is created in front of us, with Bach as its dome just the same.” – Radio Russia programme “Baroque Practice”