Tatiana Marukhina

Firma Melodiya presents a recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues performed by Tatiana Nikolayeva. Shostakovich came up with an idea of a polyphonic cycle in 1950 after he took part in the events dedicated to the 200th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death in Leipzig. As a jury member of the International Piano Competition for the best performance of Bach’s music, Shostakovich was a witness of an unconditional triumph of the young Soviet pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva who won the first prize. Upon finishing the new opus in a surprisingly short period of time (October 1950 to February 1951), Shostakovich dedicated it to Nikolayeva who performed it for the first time in 1952 in Leningrad. Since then the 24 Preludes and Fugues have been played by many pianists, but Tatiana Nikolayeva’s interpretation is still considered a model one. Tatiana Nikolayeva made this recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues in 1987.

One of the iconic investigators of contemporary fiction, Arkady Renko - cynical, analytical, and quietly subversive - has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation as obsessed with secrecy and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In Tatiana, Martin Cruz Smith’s most ambitious novel since Gorky Park, the melancholy hero finds himself on the trail of a mystery as complex and dangerous as modern Russia herself…