Maurice Ravel - Robert Schumann - Alexander Scriabin

Miroirs

Alexei Volodin

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917250824

Catalog number: CC 72508
Releasedate: 01-04-11

Alexei Volodin is a modest virtuoso. This seems contradictory but it simply means that using virtuosity just to show off is not his thing. Being technically brilliant is fine, but the feeling, the warmth, the true connection with the composer and his music are more important to him. Volodin is a true musical talent, a world renowned masterpianist who- with this album with imaginary compositions - gives his signature to a new unique document in sound with works by Ravel, Schumann and Scriabin!

Volodin received a CHOC Classica in March 2011 for his Chopin-cd and also five stars in Diapason in March 2011 for Chopin
Masterpianist Volodin plays all over the world like Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Vienna (Konzerthaus and Theater an der Wien), New York (Metropolitan Museum) and many more
Alexei Volodin performs regularly with many prestigious orchestras, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the NY Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic and Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra etc.
Volodin is modest and his art is not to play like a showman, but to be inspired and to get this across to the audience
He has won several prizes at different international competitions.
In 2003 he won the First Prize at the ninth edition of the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich, award that launched his international career
He studied and did masterclasses with: I. Chaklina, T. Zelikman, Professor Elisso Virsaladze.
In 2001/02 he studied at the Theo Lieven International Piano Foundation in Como

Ravel composed his highly imaginative piano suite Miroirs in 1904-05 after he had joined the Société des Apaches, a group of ground-breaking young musicians, composers, music critics, poets, writers and painters, among them great names like Igor Stravinsky, Florent Schmitt, Manuel de Falla and Maurice Delage. It was Ravel who proposed to adopt the main theme of the first movement of Borodin’s Second Symphony as the society’s musical dictum, a suggestion all members gladly accepted. Miroirs is a musical tribute to his fellow ‘Apaches’ or ‘hooligans’: each of the five movements is dedicated to one of the members.

The eight short pieces that comprise Schumann’s Kreisleriana not only prove the point of highest musical imagination, but each individual movement is also a prime example of formal discipline and structural coherence within the cycle as a whole. It is no coincidence that Schumann studied Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier intensively when working on the Kreisleriana. The work’s tonal scheme shares one simple, unifying harmonic factor: the related keys of the ‘daemonic’ G minor and the rather gentle B flat major underpin six of the eight movements.

Alexander Scriabin’s earliest compositions, most of them for solo piano, clearly demonstrate his adoration of Chopin, where his first two symphonies are still strongly liaised with Tchaikovsky’s. And like both these composers also Scriabin excelled in creating rich and colourful textures and sonorities. But it was Scriabin’s later fascination for Wagner, Liszt and Nietzsche, together with that mystic domain of theosophy and poetic symbolism that gradually put up a quite powerful momentum in his creative life. It all culminated in his greatest of all visions, that he would be able to establish an all-embracing, eternal and super human art form. (from the linernotes of this CD written by Aart van der Wal)

The imagination, each on another level, is an important theme in all of the works on this CD. Alexei Volodin is a master in creating the right atmosphere for these imaginative works of all three composers. Although he is a virtuoso, he is even more a pianist who can dive deep into the inner world of the composer and his work. Combined with his own inner depth this results in performances that leave a lasting impression on the listener.

Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch