SERGEI TANEYEV

 

Chamber Music

 

Piano Quintet in G minor Op.30

Piano Trio in D major Op.22

 

Vadim Repin, Ilya Gringolts, Lynn Harrell, Nobuko Imai, Mikhail Pletnev

 

'He was the key figure in Russian musical history, the greatest polyphonist after Bach. . . look who his pupils were: Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Prokofiev.'

Mikhail Pletnev to The Independent (UK) about Sergei Taneyev

 

A recording with rarely-performed chamber music by the Russian composer Taneyev, who was a student of Tchaikovsky. Tanayev was also the solo pianist who premiered nearly all of Tchaikovsky's works for piano and orchestra, and was the sole composer that Tchaikovsky actively sought critical comments from on his own compositions.

 

This CD is an excellent recording by an all-star quintet, created by Mikhail Pletnev:

 

Vadim Repin and Ilya Gringolts, two of the most exciting violinists of the younger generation from Russia, paired with Nobuko Imai (viola) and Lynn Harrell (cello), are distinguished established stars on their instruments - and the incomparable Mikhail Pletnev playing Taneyev's beautiful music.

 

The Quintet is a milestone composition from a neglected genius. Rounding off the program is Taneyev's remarkable Piano Trio, deonstating why music by this oft-neglected composer deserves our attention.

Mikhail Pletnev has been making something of a crusade on behalf of Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), a linchpin in late-Romantic Russian music but one who is generally overshadowed by such pupils as Skryabin and Rachmaninov. On other discs, Pletnev has put forward a strong case for the cantatas John of Damascus and At the Reading of a Psalm, and on this new one he draws around himself a star cast for compelling performances of two chamber works, the D major Piano Trio (1908) and the G minor Piano Quintet (1911).
Taneyev shunned any overt "Russianness" in his works, preferring to draw inspiration from the counterpoint of Bach and modelling his technique of casting logical, large-scale structures on 19th-century German patterns. Brahms is his obvious counterpart, but you only have to hear the blistering scherzo and the powerfully executed passacaglia that forms the slow movement of the Piano Quintet to appreciate that Taneyev had a mind of his own. Both the quintet and the trio show that immaculate craftsmanship can embrace a wealth of passion as well.
Geoffrey Norris, Telegraph

Mikhail Pletnev is a passionate advocate of the music of Sergey Taneyev (1856-1915), whom he holds to be one of the major figures in Russian music. As a conductor he has introduced many of us to Taneyev's orchestral music (he visited the Barbican earlier this year with the Russian National Orchestra and recorded a disc for PentaTone), and now, as pianist with a spectacular galaxy of instrumentalists, he does two of the chamber works full justice. A wonderful disc.
Gramophone

 

Deutsche Grammophon 4775419