Description
Praised in Gramophone magazine for his "vividly individual" release of Liszt'sAnnees de pelerinage in which he "strikes just the right balance between devotion and poetry", legendary pianist Michele Campanella returns to Odradek with an album of music by Mussorgsky and Scriabin.
Mussorgsky'sPictures at an Exhibition are often heard in orchestral arrangements, but it is in their original guise for the piano that we get closest to the composer's extraordinary and colourful vision. From the noble 'Promenade' theme to the grotesquery of 'Baba-Yaga's Hut on Fowl's Legs' to the majestic 'Great Gate of Kiev', Mussorgsky and Campanella take us with them on this scintillating tour, painting in sound the images witnessed by the composer at that exhibition. Scriabin's colourful visions were very real, a product of his synaesthesia combined with his ecstatic spirituality. We hear two relatively early works which anticipate elements of his later style: the seductive Sonata No. 3 and the rarely-heardValse, Op. 38.
As Michele Campanella explains in the album booklet, these works have long been close to his heart: "Mussorgsky'sPictures and the SonataNo. 3 by Scriabin have been with me for 50 years". Campanella brings this exceptional insight to his performances of these brilliant and beautiful Russian works.
