Studies For Piano, Op.18

Alexey Zuev has a very special relationship with Stravinsky’s music. From the age of seven, it entered his musical universe like a premonition, when he unknowingly ‘composed’ a piece that bore astonishing similarities to Petrushka. Five years later, he discovered the ‘real’ Stravinsky and his music never left him.

Muzio Clementi occupies a unique place in the history of the piano, with his myriad sonatas pushing the traditional classical boundaries of the form, his publishing company and piano manufacturing firm prospering both in England and on the Continent, and his famed virtuosity astonishing all who heard him. Remembered as the first of the great piano virtuosos, Clementi condensed his years of composition and performance into the monumental, three-volume Gradus ad Parnassum, a repository of stylistically diverse pieces designed to demonstrate utmost technical mastery of the instrument. This is the last disc in Alessandro Marangoni’s highly acclaimed four single disc survey.

In this wonderfully planned programme the whimsical poetry of York Bowen’s Hans Andersen ‘fragments’—music for a fully-fledged technique, despite the fairy-tale titles—is pleasingly complemented by the bravura of the studies. Nicolas Namoradze proves more than equal to the demands of both.

Alexey Zuev has a very special relationship with Stravinsky’s music. From the age of seven, it entered his musical universe like a premonition, when he unknowingly ‘composed’ a piece that bore astonishing similarities to Petrushka . Five years later, he discovered the ‘real’ Stravinsky and his music never left him.