SERGEY IVANOVICH TANEYEV (1856–1915)

 

Piano Concerto in E flat major

Music for solo piano

Four Improvisations

The Composer’s Birthday

 

Joseph Banowetz (piano) Vladimir Ashkenazy (narrator) Adam Wodnicki (piano)

Russian Philharmonic of Moscow / Thomas Sanderling

 

The CD brings another important discovery from Toccata Classics: the piano music of Sergey Taneyev is one of Russia’s best-kept musical secrets.

 

This recording marks the 150th anniversary from the birth of the composer, on 13 November 1856.

 

The cosmopolitan Taneyev was a student and a friend of Tchaikovsky; Scriabin and Rachmaninov were among his students when he became a director of the Moscow Conservatory in 1885.

 

Almost everything on this CD is a first recording.

 

Improvisation is the first recording of a composition written jointly by Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Arensky and Glazunov – four composers premiered in one work!

 

The narrator in The Composer’s Birthday is none other than Vladimir Ashkenazy.

 

Toccata Classics TOCC0042