NEW CLASSICS:
Described by The New York Times as ‘a man whose nature was designed with pianos in mind', Liverpool-born Anthony Goldstone is one of Britain's most respected pianists. A sixth-generation pupil of Beethoven through his great teacher Maria Curcio, Goldstone was born in Liverpool and studied with Derrick Wyndham at the Royal Manchester College of Music and with Curcio in London. His career has taken him to six continents and the Last Night of the Proms (where he was much praised by Benjamin Britten) as well as many broadcasts and nearly seventy CDs. He is also one half of the brilliant piano duo Goldstone and Clemmow with his wife Caroline.

Volume three of the [new Russian Piano Music ]series, originally available on Olympia, features ... Reinhold Gliere, who was born in Kiev and by 1913 had won fame both as a composer and conductor. For over twenty years from 1920 he was Professor of Composition at the Moscow Conservatory and was probably the greatest musical survivor of his time as well as being a highly respected teacher. The Preludes included here have memorable melodies ranging from the virtuosic to the intense to intimate and are considered to be the most important of Gliere's solo piano pieces. Anthony Goldstone's formidable playing on both discs is technically superb and articulate, revealing all the passion and colour in this little heard music.
John Pitt

CLASSICALNET (joint review with dda25081 and 25084):
These three new discs from Divine Art are dedicated to the Russian piano school and make for hugely interesting listening. The three composers are Vladimir Rebikov, Sergey Lyapunov and Reinhold Gliere, the latter two perhaps more familiar than the first one but a satisfying discovery nonetheless.

Rebikov was an excellent teacher and performer with his output including various chamber and orchestral works as well as several stage works. However his greatest legacy remains his varied and assorted collection of piano pieces which finds a good selection here. Apparently his later work includes some rather dissonant pieces which caused him to fall out of favour but the pieces recorded here remind one of such luminaries of his time such as Vaughan Williams, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Mompou.

Gliere who was of Belgian descent was also a dab hand on the piano as the 25 Preludes demonstrate with fantastic amounts of colour and quite amazing virtuosic demands. The same goes for the Mazurkas and also the Esquisses which have that tinge of oriental colour which we find in his orchestral works with the ballet "Red Poppy" and the massive 3 rd Symphony, "Ilya Murometz" coming to mind.

Finally there's the disc dedicated to Sergey Lyapunov who is also a master of the miniature but who composed a Piano Sonata which is unjustifiably rather neglected nowadays. I greatly enjoyed his Variations on a Georgian Theme as well as the moving "Fêtes de Noël", a lovingly created miniature for the Christmas period.

After listening to these performances for the best part of four hours, I have to say that I was bowled over by Anthony Goldstone's consummate artistry and sheer virtuosity in these multi faceted pieces. Like the Shostakovich volume, these three discs are a must acquisition for those who know and love things Russian. Fastidiously detailed notes and fine recordings complement what must be one of the highlights of piano recordings this year.
Gerald Fenech

FANFARE:
The three collections heard on this album all appeared in 1906-09. It was a highly productive period for Glière, with dozens of songs and piano collections to his credit, and one that saw the composition of his Symphony No. 2 (1908), the Ilya Muromets Symphony (begun in 1909), and the symphonic poem Sireni (finished in 1908). It was also his most stylistically audacious period – audacious for Glière, at any rate with such pieces as the second prelude, the third mazurka, and especially the first of the sketches (where the reduction of the theme on occasion to one or two unharmonized voices leaves the tonality repeatedly up in the air) providing a moderately more chromatic palette to his harmonies than would be true at any later point in his life.

That is also probably the first and last time you'll find the composer's name in any proximity to the adjective “audacious”. Glière came to musical maturity early, in an environment of Rimsky-Korsakov and Chopin. He wrote fluently in both styles, and in a way that sounded far more natural than the composers who shifted to Russian nationalism after an artistically reactionary Stalin closed down both the Radical Association for Contemporary Music (for which Roslavets was one of the leading ideologues), and the conservative Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. As a rule, even the best ideological and musical credentials didn't escape the father of Nations' notice, as Miaskovsky and Shebalin experienced to their regret during the 1948 Congress of the Composers' Union; but through it all Glière moved with ease. He may have won Stalin Prizes only three times, as opposed to Miaskovsky, who received an unprecedented six, but he never suffered the condemnation that others of his visibility and talents did.

If the ease of writing in these works impresses, so does their quality. These aren't pale pieces designed to merely test and extend a pianist's technique, but expressively varied, cleverly crafted, and thematically memorable works. I have to agree with Goldstone: It's amazing that they've been overlooked by recitalists, though Glière's pedagogical reputation, and the inaccessibility of his lesser-known music in the West during the Iron Curtain years, may have had much to do with this. In any case, I suspect at least the ninth, 10 th , and 11 th preludes in this collection will be showing up in recitals. Every good pianist knows that an audience likes to relax with a big, good tune, and these Rachmaninoff – like pieces have that quality in spades.

Anthony Goldstone has the technique and, equally important, the style to perform these works. Moving easily between open – gestured theatricality and a Bellini – like cantilena, he never finds himself challenged by either Glière's romantic rhetoric or his exercises in virtuosity. With a refined sense of color in both hands, and an ability to clarify textures, the composer could hardly wish for a better advocate.

The sound is warm and close, with zealous, informed notes by Goldstone. Recommended? But of course.
Barry Brenesal

MUSICWEB:
Reinhold Glière is a composer whose music I am always happy to seek out based on a personal and quite disproportionate affection for his sprawling Symphony No.3 Ilya Murometz . An eighty minute plus orchestral epic is not necessarily the best guide to the style of a collection of forty piano miniatures. Although all the music presented here was written in the first decade of the last century its stylistic heart, as with the bulk of Glière's music, looks back to an earlier age. I should say right off that I enjoyed every aspect of this disc. This is the first disc I have heard of Anthony Goldstone in solo recital and it is clear from the very first bars that he is totally at ease with both the technical aspect of this far from simple music but more importantly the idiom of it too. For although there is a clear “Russian-ness” to this music it is - and I do not mean this disparagingly - more of the Salon than the wind-swept Steppe. Several times I was reminded of Tchaikovsky's piano music which is still relatively unknown. Particularly in the main work - the 25 Preludes Op.30 - the fairly undigested influence of other great writers for solo piano is clear. So track 2 - Prelude in C minor - is the absolute cousin (if not twin!) of the famous Chopin Prelude Op.28 No.20 in the same key. This was the Chopin prelude that Rachmaninoff used in his own Variations on a Theme of Chopin of 1902. Whether this is a homage or a shameless ‘lift' is unclear!

Now the objection that some have to Glière is that he was some kind of musical/moral chancer but as Goldstone puts it very neatly in his liner-note - “[he] ... became the doyen - and one must say, the great survivor - of Russian music”. Just look at his dates; born more than forty years before the revolution he outlived Stalin. Pre-revolution this equates to being a musical-magpie as in the compositions presented here. Post-revolution the party line was toed with alacrity with inspirational ballets - The Red Poppy being the most famous by some way - and easy on the ear, orchestrally colourful populist works. As long as you are not looking to Glière to provide a profound artistic commentary on Russia in the 20 th Century you will get along just fine. His natural gift for melody and, where appropriate, colourful orchestration, makes his music thoroughly enjoyable. Which is why his symphonic music has done pretty well on CD with multiple versions of Ilya Murometz from Stokowski onwards and a Chandos series of the other orchestral works proving irresistible to those partial to a good tune like myself. Certainly, the music on this disc is easily enjoyable from the very first listen. Yes, one is drawn inexorably into the ‘influenced-by' game but since this music does not start out with any great pretensions somehow that matters very little.

Goldstone's particular musical skill is the way in which he pitches these performances so perfectly. For sure all of the stormy drama of say Prelude No.18 in G sharp minor is played for all it is worth but at the same time Goldstone does not overburden with music with ‘meaning' it probably does not merit. These are pieces that range in duration from just 38 seconds to only 3:24 so they are not intended to be ‘big' intellectual paragraphs. Prelude No.21 in B flat major shows the constituent elements of this disc to good effect; Glière's lyrically passionate melody richly embroidered with complex passage work is performed with all the ardour and technical accomplishment one could wish for. This movement is a real winner - the second longest piece on the disc at 3:11 - it does sound rather like a piano transcription of a Glazunov Pas de Deux !

The recording, which dates from 2002, suits the music well. Although recorded in a church the acoustic presents the instrument in more of a drawing-room environment. Goldstone plays on a Grotrian piano which suits this performance very well - again I found myself thinking that a grander sounding piano might well overwhelm the music. Not that for a moment anyone should take from this any sense of the piano sounding underpowered. Goldstone contributes the informative and useful liner-note and he names this set of preludes as the composer's most important contribution to the medium. Never having heard a note of his piano music before this I'm in no position to judge but I would echo his comment that it is; “… a most impressive work and it is astonishing that it has languished overlooked for so long”. Referring to my favourite free source for scores - IMSLP - I see that you can view these works - http://imslp.org/wiki/25_Preludes,_Op.30 - and for anyone interested in Russian romantic piano music I would heartily recommend a look. The CD is completed by two sets of shorter works. Both again have immediate charm and appeal although personally I find the 3 Mazurkas Op.29 to be less individual - now this would be a good blind listening disc, thoroughly enjoyable but totally perplexing I would bet! The 12 Esquisses Op.47 Goldstone speculates had a pedagogic function. Certainly these brief pieces seem to focus on a single facet of playing and the texture is considerably simpler than that of the preceding preludes. He suggests titles for the movements which seem apt both musically and spiritually even if they are of his own rather than the composer's invention. Again, Goldstone is able to play with a simple sincerity and beautifully unmannered phrasing that serves the music to perfection.

This disc is part of a survey from Divine Art entitled ‘Russian Piano Music Series'. Currently five volumes are listed with two others also being performed by Anthony Goldstone. If the music itself and musical and production values on the other discs match the one under review here then this will prove to be a most desirable series and one that I hope to hear more of.
Nick Barnard 

PIANIST (joint review of 25081, 25083, 25084, 25085):
More Russian repertoire comes from the pianist Anthony Goldstone who has probably the widest palette of all – and surely the brightest of all waistcoats. Goldstone is known for his extensive series of four-handed recordings with Caroline Clemmow and his solo recordings are all of immense interest. Readers may remember my job over his recent release of music inspired by dances. Here Goldstone embarks on a (long, I hope) series of Russian piano music. Composers who lived now brought out into the daylight: Arensky, with his tuneful Preludes: Lyapunov, a minor Liszt follower: Glière, more known for his large-scale orchestral music: and the least-known Rebikov, who was, however, immortalised by his Christmas Tree , once a stalwart of piano score anthologies. All of Goldstone's discs are highly satisfying, played with power and conviction and if there are not true masterpieces among the many smaller works, they are far more rewarding to listen to than many of the minor British composers living in the shadow of Elgar and Vaughan Williams.
Marius Dawn Pianist Recommended Recording

MUSICA (Italy) (joint review of vols 1-5):
This is a nice collection of CDs of the Russian piano repertoire. The next two are soon to be released [and are now available on divine art dda25095 and 25096] , but the fact that they will include Rachmaninov's and Prokofiev's pieces makes them less interesting, at least for their rarity. While, instead, recordings completely devoted to works by Arensky, Lyapunov, Glière and Rebikov are not released every day. On this our acknowledgements go to the British company [Divine Art], new on the Italian market.. The interpreter of the four single-composer CDs and also the author of the excellent informative notes included is Anthony Goldstone; while the first CD of the collection, which features several composers, is interpreted by Murray McLachlan: Kabalevsky's and Shostakovich's sonatas are not new to the record industry, but the pieces by Myaskovsky, Stevenson and Shchedrin – though not at their first recording here – can be considered real rarities.

The four composers of the monographic CDs represent, in the Russian music scene, as many different positions, equidistant from both Romanticism and Impressionism, for sure closer to Tchaikovsky than to Mussorgsky and the Group of Five; and in the case of Rebikov and Glière, who died in 1920 and 1956 – the modernistic poetics from the 20th century.

Having lived a short and profligate life, Anton Arensky left less rich a production than he could have. Still, he wrote a hundred pieces for piano, inspired by the romanticism of Chopin and Tchaikovsky, which informed his work to the utmost. He also taught Rachmaninov and Scriabin. These days Arensky is mainly renowned for the lovely waltz from the first Suite for two pianos, but his Studies and Preludes are valuable too; and mainly the six Essais sur des rythmes oubliées , Op.28, with its unusual metres.

Sergei Lyapunov (who lived a longer and more sober life than Arensky but one which was no more productive) was also a great romantic, in the line of Chopin, Liszt and Anton Rubinstein, but in his works the popular Russian tradition is more present, because he was a close friend and pupil of Balakirev, father of the “Five”, who dedicated to Lyapunov the Sonata for piano he finally completed in 1905. In answer to this Lyapunov composed the Sonata Goldstone plays here. If Arensky is renowned for his lovely waltz, works by Lyapunov are performed too every now and then, mainly during the conservatoire exams: especially some of the twelve Transcendental Studies that complete the tonal cycle Liszt started with his works of this name. The CD includes the sonata and some other works, the well-known Fêtes de Noël , Op.41, among them.

Vladimir Rebikov, the third of these composers to be born in the 1860s, died in 1920; though far less renowned than the two abovementioned, he produced a much more innovative musical language: Stravinsky himself mentions him in this sense. His innovations anticipate certain harmonic aspects of the 20th century (whole-tone system, unresolved harmonies, pieces without bars and metre, tone clusters). At the beginning of the CD Goldstone performs two short pieces where Rebikov anticipates two moments that are reminiscent of both Stravinsky ( Le sacre du printemps ) and Messiaen ( Quatuor pour la fin du temps ). Apart from this peculiarity, Rebikov's piano production, also because of his natural bent for teaching, is made up of short and very short pieces (on the CD sixteen out of forty-three last less than one minute). However, there is also a major work, a ‘tableau musical-psycologique' entitled Esclavage et liberté (Op.22). Other oddities: a cycle of seven pieces that lasts three minutes and a half ( Une fête , Op.38) and one out of four pieces written without accidentals, on white keys only ( Chansons blanches , Op.48).

While Rebikov and Lyapunov died shortly after the establishment of the Soviet regime, Reinhold Glière lived all through the period of Stalinism, outliving the dictator himself by three years. As a composer he remained a traditionalist Romantic, and he didn't reject the opportunity to celebrate a few feasts of the new regime with his music. Also Glière wrote short pieces for piano, mainly in Chopin's tradition but as well in that Russian piano music style of the day, led by the influence of Scriabin. A wonderful pianist, Arensky's and Taneyev's pupil, he reached his creative peak in the 25 Preludes Op.30 ( twenty-five as he adds to the series – which follows Bach's, not Chopin's harmonic order – one last Prelude in C major, just as Alkan did): an impressive, extremely varied and interesting series. The spirit of Chopin, inherited through his Polish mother, marks Glière's short Mazurka (Op.29), and the eloquent simplicity of the Esquisses Op.47 betrays educational, but mostly appropriate, intentions. As for his discography, Anthony Goldstone is an interpreter we can't overlook. The repertoire he presents is not just special and precious, but also put forward with remarkable cultural intelligence: each one of his CDs can be said to develop a theme. This knowledge of the various repertoires also enables him to move with extreme versatility from genre to genre, from composer to composer, from character to character: from the sentimentalism, a little frivolous, of some of Arensky's pieces, to the irony of work by Rebikov; from Lyapunov's Russian-style harmonies to the cyclical integrity of Glière's Preludes , everything performed through the vaguely archaic sound of a Grotrian piano, Goldstone convinces and charms us.
Riccardo Risaliti