Feinberg - Piano Concerto No. 1

[indutrial]

Since I heard his sonatas on those two BIS discs back in '05, I've been pretty hooked on the piano music of Samuil Feinberg, so when I heard about this disc there was little chance that I would pass it up.

https://www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=03J002

The 1st concerto, which was MIA for over 50 years, marks his Op. 20, composed between his 6th and 7th piano sonatas. Has anyone else here ordered this or heard it yet? To my taste, Feinberg's piano compositions are right up alongside works by Scriabin and Roslavets and representative of one of music's most inventive and solid periods, so it's very exciting to see and hear more discoveries like this being made.

[retrouvailles]

I have been meaning to order this for a long time, but haven't because it has not appeared on Amazon yet and I don't want to put up with Records International's slow shipping. Judging from the sheet music, this looks like quite the spectacle of a piano concerto. I always enjoy hearing new pieces from the so-called Soviet Avant-Garde, so I am sure that I wont be disappointed in this new release.

[general disarray]

Woefully ignorant of Feinberg's work.  Could you guys recommend some recordings?

Has MAH recorded some of his transcriptions on Hyperion?  This might be all I know of his output.

Thanks.

[indutrial]

Woefully ignorant of Feinberg's work.  Could you guys recommend some recordings?

Has MAH recorded some of his transcriptions on Hyperion?  This might be all I know of his output.

Thanks.

I would recommend either purchasing or downloading (on Amazon or EMusic) the two CDs of his complete sonatas (twelve altogether) that were released on the BIS label ( www.bis.se ). It's an incredible wealth of music for the price you pay.

First volume:
https://www.amazon.com/Samuil-Feinberg-Piano-Sonatas-Nos/dp/B00018D3TQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1210361162&sr=1-2

Second volume:
https://www.amazon.com/Samuil-Feinberg-Piano-Sonatas-Nos/dp/B0001LYGGC/ref=pd_bxgy_m_text_b

The MP3 downloads pages linked to each of these listings has sound samples for every track.


The JS Bach transcription disc on Hyperion is performed by Martin Roscoe:
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/hypersearch/al.asp?al=CDA67468&f=feinberg

I don't have any of the recordings that are available of the 2nd and 3rd piano concertos at this point. I'm sure the first concerto will be excellent and will entice me towards picking up copies of the rest.

Also, check out Jonathan Powell's blog, because he's got a freely-available recording of one (maybe more?) of the sonatas from one of his performances.

Yet another recommendation I would make is Jenny Lin's amazing disc, "Preludes to a Revolution", which features Feinberg's op. 8 preludes amongst a ton of other preludes by Russian contemporaries of his that were also excellent composers. Besides Feinberg, that disc has bits by Roslavets, Alexandrov, Scriabin, and the sadly-short-lived Stanchinsky (drowned at 26 years old, possibly by suicide  ). Anyhow, that's a good disc to listen to for a more general framework of Russian piano composing in the late- to post-romantic years.

https://www.amazon.com/Preludes-Revolution-Anatol-Alexandrov/dp/B0009ML2OM/ref=pd_sim_m_title_1

[general disarray]

Thanks so much for your reply!

[retrouvailles]

Actually, Hamelin did record one of Feinberg's original works, namely the Berceuse, which is a wonderful little piece. One can only hope that he turns his attention to some of the larger works in Feinberg's oeuvre. This isn't a high priority of his, I would expect, but it would be nice.

[indutrial]

So then,

Records International kicked ass this week and got this disc to me in 3 days flat! I've listened to the concerto and I have to say that it's a pretty amazing piece. It is unspeakably epic and definitely heavy-handed in terms of harmony and overall tone. It has a real 1960s sci-fi/apocalyptic/exotic-alien-world feel to it, and some of the orchestral parts evoke memories I have of the original Planet of the Apes movies and the movie for Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which I think Bernhard Herrmann scored. There are definitely a few calmer sections to the piece, of which a very beautiful tranquillo section in the beginning of the final 1/3 is noteworthy. As that part develops, it swirls around and around back towards denser harmonies before it pauses slightly and the ensemble wells up like a volcano, delivers the final agitato, and ends on a bright and optimistic C major chord.

The disc also features a whole heap of other solo piano pieces, including the ghostly and beautiful-sounding Etude op. 11/4 in f minor and the very dark and stormy Fantasia No. 2, op. 9 in e minor, of which Christophe Sirodeau says:

"[It's] another example of haunted music, a product of its time. It was composed probably between 1918-19, a period of acute horror and suffering in Russia..."

This piece is definitely worth the attention of anyone who wants to add an extremely intense and emotionally-wrought piece to their repertoire.

I haven't thoroughly listened to the other pieces, which include short pieces ranging from 1917-1955 and a book of children's pieces Feinberg wrote in 1961-2.

All and all, this disc is a fabulous thing to grab up for anybody who likes Busoni (very strong influence on Feinberg during his developmental years), Bacevicius, Sorabji, Szymanowski, Skalkottas (who the pianist Christophe Sirodeau also promotes), Scriabin, or anything under the wide-spanning moniker of neo-romanticism, though the harmony swirls into polytonality and free tonality very often. On top of the disc being great, the booklet is like 20 pages long, with pictures and all.

[retrouvailles]

I'll have to grab that CD after my credit card recovers from some recent spending. I am a pretty big fan of Feinberg and after hearing his 2nd and 3rd piano concertos I can only be anxious to hear this one. Piano concertos are probably my favorite genre also.

[general disarray]

Bought a copy of Feinberg's first six sonatas and, I gotta tell you, this music is just sensational.  Pianists Samaltanos and Sirodeau are real powerhouses.  Poetic and powerful.  Beautiful sound.  The BIS recording is state of the art.

The Scriabin influence is strong, of course, but there's a real original voice here.  I think it's Feinberg's amazing projection of his own psychological/emotional struggle against the madness of the zeitgeist that comes through so forcibly.  Less Scriabin-esque mysticism (which often gives me a sense of vertigo) and more struggle on the human/mortal dimension.

I'm smitten and going to buy more.  The works sound fiendishly difficult, so I'm going to confine myself to listening for awhile.

Thanks for the great recommendation! 

[indutrial]

Here is a website with more info on Christophe Sirodeau and the International Feinberg/Skalkottas Society. Nice little site about two of my favorite 20th century composers.

https://www.skfe.com/index.html

Samaltanos' recording of Skalkottas 32 piano pieces is stellar. These guys deserve a truckload of respect for putting so much effort into publicizing such amazing obscurities.

On a note a touch more related to Feinberg, or at least Russian music from roughly the same era, I was wondering if anybody's ever recorded all 3 of Protopopov's piano sonatas. I heard the second one played on a Hatart release of Soviet avant-garde music (with Mosolov, Lourie, Roslavets, etc...) and noticed that Jonathan Powell had all three of them listed as parts of his repertoire. His piano music is certainly worth looking into if you like Russian piano work from the period of the names I mentioned. I'm awaiting a CD of Mosolov's piano works in the mail as I speak. I got spurred on to this when Pianophilia members started contributing heavily to the "Scriabinists and Russian Avant-Garde" thread with tons of names I'd never heard of. A pleasant discovery of my own in this ilk came in the form of Lithuanian composer Vytautas Bacevicius (brother of Polish pianist/violinist/composer Grazyna Bacewicz). Bacevicius' early works, including his first piano concerto, draw a lot of influence from Scriabin's example. He wrote a few volumes worth of piano music and a volume of organ music, which are distributed by Music Export Lithuania. Here is a cool article for any who are interested:

https://www.mxl.lt/en/info/271