Fuck Yeah Classical

theauditory:

Fairy Tale, Op. 14, No.1, “Song of Ophelia”; Andantino con moto 
Geoffrey Tozer, piano.

Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (1880 - 1951) was a Russian composer who seems now often neglected next to his contemporaries (including his bff, Rachmaninoff). He is not, however, a composer to forget, as his music individually continued the romantic musical traditions into the 20th century. As a distinguish and accomplished pianist, his pianism’s effect on his music is undeniable. He wrote music mostly for piano (including three piano concertos). Among those works not written for piano are three violin sonatas and numerous songs. 

One genre for which Medter became a champion is that of the Russian skazka, or “fairy tale”. It became one of the favorite genres among his piano works. The fairy tale genre had appeared in music literature in the first half of the nineteenth century, though no composer dedicated as much time to its musical development as did Medtner. The genre is associated with many artistic traditions, including Russian folk art. Included in the genre are various types of story telling, such as legend or bylina, an epic, narrative type of poetry. These images inspired Russian composers, including Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov. Medtner established the genre skazka in solo piano music.

Comparatively, fairy tales are akin to other small form genres in musical literature such as preludes and impromptus. One defining characteristic and difference of Medtner’s treatment of these fairy tales as compared to other small form genres is his, sometimes indirect, use of programmatic themes. They are to be categorized as program works, even though there is sometimes no published program. His development of this small form genre is explain by Henrich Neuhaus: “One of Medtner’s favorite piano genres was fairy tale — little musical novellas. This genre is close of novelettes of Schumann and to intermezzos of Brahms, but is quite new and original due to program-poetic content, even though not indicated.” 

The sources of imagery of Medtner’s fairy tales are diverse. Of 38 fairy tales, 21 pieces have some set of references, as either indicated through titles or epigraphs. These references reach from images taken from literature or poetry (“Song of Ophelia,” Medtner’s name for Fairy Tale op. 14, no. 1; “King Lear,” Fairy Tale op. 35, no. 4; and “Poor Knight,” Fairy Tale op. 34, no. 4, taken from Pushkin), to images of nature (Fairy Tale op. 34, no. 2, and op. 34, no. 3, which carries the epigraph “Forest spirit (but a kindly, plaintive one)”), and various Russian folk images (op. 51, dedicated to “Cinderella and Ivan,” Fairy Tale op. 42, no. 2, entitled “Russian Tale,” and Fairy Tale op. 48, “Dance Tale”). The themes from Medtner’s fairy tales occassionaly made their way into some of his other works, such as his third piano concerto, inspired by Lermontov’s poem Mermaid, and his Sonata-Märchen, op. 25, no. 2, which carries the epigraph “The entire piece in an epic spirit.”*

—Laura

*Source: Ekaterina Chernaya-Oh