Composer: Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Scriabin
Performer: Michele Campanella
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Odradek Records
Release: 2021
Size: 954 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
01. Promenade I
02. Gnomus
03. Promenade II
04. The Old Castle
05. Promenade III
06. The Tuileries Gardens
07. Bydło
08. Promenade IV
09. Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells
10. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle
11. Promenade V
12. The Market-Place at Limoges
13. The Catacombs (Sepulcrum romanum)
14. Con mortuis in lingua mortua
15. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba-Yaga)
16. The Great Gate of Kiev
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in F sharp minor, Op. 23
17. I. Drammatico
18. II. Allegretto
19. III. Andante
20. IV. Presto con fuoco
21. Scriabin: Waltz in A flat major, Op. 38
Praised in Gramophone magazine for his “vividly individual” release of Liszt’s ‘Annes de plerinage’ in which he “strikes just the right balance between devotion and poetry”, legendary pianist Michele Campanella returns to Odradek with an album of music by Mussorgsky and Scriabin.
Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ are often heard in orchestral arrangements, but it is in their original guise for the piano that we get closest to the composer’s extraordinary and colourful vision. From the noble ‘Promenade’ theme to the grotesquery of ‘Baba-Yaga’s Hut on Fowl’s Legs’ to the majestic ‘Great Gate of Kiev’, Mussorgsky and Campanella take us with them on this scintillating tour, painting in sound the images witnessed by the composer at that exhibition. Scriabin’s colourful visions were very real, a product of his synaesthesia combined with his ecstatic spirituality. We hear two relatively early works which anticipate elements of his later style: the seductive Sonata No. 3 and the rarely-heard ‘Valse’, Op. 38.
As Michele Campanella explains in the album booklet, these works have long been close to his heart: “Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures’ and the Sonata No. 3 by Scriabin have been with me for 50 years”. Campanella brings this exceptional insight to his performances of these brilliant and beautiful Russian works.
Also available: ODRCD391 Liszt: Annees de Pelerinage