Sladkovsky

Sladkovsky was born in 1965 in Taganrog to a family of musicians. His mother was a pianist and father is a clarinet player. He studied at the Tchaikovsky music school in Taganrog (class of N. I. Bortsova). At the age of 10 he moved to Moscow, where graduated from Moscow Military Music College as a trumpeter and Moscow State Conservatory (Military conducting department). He then graduated from Saint Petersburg State Conservatory (class of professor V. A. Chernushenko). He made his conducting debut with Mozart's Così fan tutte in 1997 that was a production of the State Opera and Ballet Theatre of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In two years he became a laureate of the III International Prokofiev Competition.

Melodiya presents a disc recorded by young Russian pianist Dmitry Masleev. The musicians name became widely known after his convincing victory at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015 when he received the first prize and a special prize for his performance of a Mozart concerto. Dmitry Masleev was born in Ulan-Ude and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied under Professor Mikhail Petukhov.

Winner of the 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition, Nikita Mndoyants debuts here on the Steinway Label with an electric program. His performances are “flawlessly paced, beautifully detailed and emotionally powerful” (Dallas Morning News). Coming from a family of professional musicians, Nikita Mndoyants began to play piano and compose music at a very young age. He entered Central Music School in Moscow, where he studied piano with Tamara Koloss. He gave his first public recital at age eight, and recorded his first album at age ten. Since 2013 he has been a professor of orchestration at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. As a composer, he received first prize at the 2014 Myaskovsky International Competition of Composers and the 2016 Prokofiev International Competition of Composers.

Kholodenko has worked with Yuri Bashmet, Vladimir Spivakov, Constantine Orbelian, Mark Gorenstein, Alexander Rudin, Dmitry Liss, Eugeny Bushkov, Alexander Sladkovsky, and other distinguished conductors, and has performed across the globe in Austria, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States. He released recordings of Liszt, Rachmaninov, and Medtner on Russia's TV Culture label in 2009. An avid chamber musician as well, he performed and recorded a CD with violinist Alena Baeva, and formed a piano duo with Andrey Gugnin which they dubbed "iDuo." The duo has released a recording with Delos Records.

“Pure and penetrating” was the violin playing of Johann Sebastian Bach according to the tradition of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel: “He fully understood the possibilities of all violin instruments. This is testified by his soli for violin and cello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect to become a good violinist and he could advise nothing better than the violin soli without bass mentioned above.” When Carl Philipp Emanuel addressed these words in a letter to the musicologist and early Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel in 1774, Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin were known to a still manageable, albeit growing circle of enthusiasts.

“Pure and penetrating” was the violin playing of Johann Sebastian Bach according to the tradition of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel: “He fully understood the possibilities of all violin instruments. This is testified by his soli for violin and cello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect to become a good violinist and he could advise nothing better than the violin soli without bass mentioned above.” When Carl Philipp Emanuel addressed these words in a letter to the musicologist and early Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel in 1774, Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin were known to a still manageable, albeit growing circle of enthusiasts. Now these works are taken up on the present recording by Mikhail Pochekin.