Nicholas Walker Balakirev

This fourth volume in Nicholas Walker’s complete edition of Balakirev’s piano music is structured around his three Scherzos, which take us from the youthful influence of Chopin and Liszt in the First Scherzo, to the music of his prolific final decade, from which the Second Scherzo is one of his finest compositions. Balakirev’s interest in Spanish music was kindled by his mentor Glinka, creating surprisingly authentic sounding textures and rhythms, and the programme is topped with the elegantly masterful poetry of the two Valse-Caprices.

Balakirev’s appreciation of other composers is reflected in transcriptions that also reveal his brilliance as a pianist. With several world premiere recordings, this programme includes the marvelous balalaika sonorities and virtuoso colors to be found in operas by Glinka, the novel concept of dovetailing preludes by Chopin, and the richness of Beethoven’s string quartets. A plaintive Gondola Song, the relentlessly energetic Tarantelle and Balakirev’s earliest surviving piano opus conclude this fifth volume in Nicholas Walker’s acclaimed complete edition of his piano works.

This fourth volume in Nicholas Walker’s complete edition of Balakirev’s piano music is structured around his three Scherzos, which take us from the youthful influence of Chopin and Liszt in the First Scherzo, to the music of his prolific final decade, from which the Second Scherzo is one of his finest compositions. Balakirev’s interest in Spanish music was kindled by his mentor Glinka, creating surprisingly authentic sounding textures and rhythms, and the programme is topped with the elegantly masterful poetry of the two Valse-Caprices.

This final volume in Nicholas Walker’s much-admired survey of the complete solo piano music of Balakirev includes the composer’s famous work for piano, Islamey, an exotic and ultravirtuoso oriental tale. Also featured are previously unpublished and unrecorded miniatures - pieces that are both poetic and, in the case of the Elegy on the Death of a Mosquito, witty. Transcriptions of Glinka are included, and Walker has arranged Balakirev’s passionate and sensual symphonic poem Tamara for solo piano, recreating textures redolent of the composer’s own piano style. He also plays Au jardin, an Idyll-Étude of rapt beauty and tenderness.