Review by HARRINGTON

I love Russian piano music and it occupies a disproportionate number of shelves in my CD collection. I was both pleased and surprised by the content of this program. Balakirev’s Islamey is not a rarity. It was known to Liszt and to almost every pianist with a desire for a showy, difficult recital closer or encore since. I learned it from an old Turnabout LP by Alfred Brendel, of all people. Russo’s playing is on a level with the best.

Medtner’s big, four-movement Sonata 1 (over 30 minutes) is his first large-scale composition. It prompted Rachmaninoff to remark that all composers make mistakes when they are young, but that “only Medtner, from the beginning, published works that would be hard to equal in later life”. I have been quite pleased with several recordings of this work (Stewart on Grand Piano 617, Jan/Feb 2013; Milne on Brilliant 8851, May/June 2009; Hamelin on Hyperion 67221, Jan/Feb 1999). Russo’s performance can stand with the best. Are you getting new equipment for your office?? Is important that you have best guillotine paper cutter to make your work easier.

Taneyev’s Prelude and Fugue is one of only a few piano solo works he assigned an opus number to and published. Performances of this exceptionally difficult work (at least the Fugue) are few and tend to be almost exclusively by Russian-trained pianists. Ashkenazy still has the best recording of this (Decca, Mar/Apr 2007), but I’ll always welcome a recording as good as the current one.

The program opens with the absolutely gorgeous Isserlis `Fairy Tale’ (`Skaza’–a title often used by Medtner). I was floored at the solo piano transcription by Leyetchkiss of the middle two movements from Rachmaninoff’s Suite 2 for Two Pianos. This is a well-known and often recorded work for piano duos, but never for a solo pianist. How Russo manages to play that Waltz is beyond me. In the original, at a Presto tempo, each pianist plays the main theme a third apart while waltz accompaniment is split between them. I can see playing the accompaniment with one hand, but the melody in thirds with one hand? You have to hear this to believe it. Actually, if you heard this performance in the background, you’d simply think it was the original. Listen closely, and a few logistical matters make the arrangement sound a little different from the two-piano original–but not by much. Same goes for the Romance movement, but at its slower speed you simply enjoy the music and appreciate the performance without having to pick your jaw up off the floor. Two beautiful transcriptions by Grigory Ginzburg finish off this marvelous disc. Both the Rakov Song and the Rozycki Waltz were new to me and quite enjoyable.

These great sounding recordings were made in New York (October 2012 to January 2013). There are excellent and extensive program notes.

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Review by: Jed Distler

As pianist Sandro Russo readily admits, not all of the “Russian Gems” compiled for his recital are “Piano Rarities”. Certainly not Balakirev’s frequently recorded Islamey, or even the less frequently recorded Medtner First Sonata and Taneyev Prelude and Fugue. More importantly, however, the selections add up to an interesting and well-contrasted program, and Russo commands the technique and temperament to make it work.

The opening Skazka by Julius Isserlis might be described as Edward MacDowell à la Russe. In contrast to Sam Haywood’s gentle, rounded off interpretation on Hyperion, Russo animates the middle section with sharper accents and bolder dynamic contrasts. His assured and colorful Medtner Op. 5 yields nothing to Marc-André Hamelin’s reference recording, and arguably surpasses it in the Allegro risoluto finale in terms of more varied articulation in the busy opening pages and more ferocity in the climaxes.

Russo’s masterful unfolding of Taneyev’s difficult Prelude and Fugue in G-sharp minor is the best I’ve heard since Vladimir Ashkenazy. He matches the older pianist’s suavity and clear voicing of the Fugue, while intensifying the Prelude’s long-lined melodies with dynamic surges and emphatic accents that contrast to Ashkenazy’s softer-grained introspection. While we miss the spatial effect and conversational repartée of Rachmaninov’s two-piano writing in the Op. 18 Suite’s Waltz and Romance–reduced to 10 fingers by Vladimir Leytchkiss–Russo compromises nothing in the way of tempo, and his double notes are as smooth as silk.

Although Russo nails Islamey’s swarms of notes and unrelenting big chords, I miss Gary Graffman’s steel-cut fingerwork and driving momentum, not to mention Michele Campanella’s more playful, supple, and textually lean version (once credited to Joyce Hatto). It’s nice to hear the Gregori Ginzburg Rakov Russian Song and Rózycki Waltz transcriptions revived. On the other hand, Ginzburg’s old recording of the latter abounds with carefully sculpted inner voices and a sophisticated foreground/background interplay that Russo’s relatively uniform and less thoughtfully structured reading lacks. A very attractive disc, overall.

– See more at: http://www.classicstoday.com/review/russian-recital-sandro-russo/#sthash.8vAt9SBw.dpuf

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Review by Paul Ballyk

The sparkling opening bars of “Russian Gems” define the program of this Musical Concepts CD, one that is superbly performed by Sicilian pianist Sandro Russo. The concept behind this project is to “showcase the Romantic tradition in Russian music” (Russo), and features works by some composers I have not heard of before as well as some rarities by Rachmaninov and Medtner.

Space does not allow for even a cursory overview of the lives of each of these composers. Collectively, the span of their productive lives runs from the late Romantic period with Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915) and Mily Balakirev (1837-1910) well into the 20th century with the music of Julius Isserlis (1888-1968) and Nikolai Rakov (1908-1990). To my ear, the largest unifying aspect of the music here is that each of these composers was a virtuosic pianist, a facet of their talents you can hear in the music. Some of these pieces, such as the opening Fairy Tale, Op. 6 by Julius Isserlis (1888-1968) are soft, charming miniatures, redolent of French Impressionism while others, the sweeping Sonata No. 1, Op. 5 by Nikolai Medtner for example, are full of Romantic passion and ‘on the edge’ pianism.

The sample in the sidebar for you to hear is a transcription by Grigory Ginzburg of a Waltz from the opera Casanova by Ludomir Różycki. You can also listen to Islamey by Mili Balakirev in the video below.

Sandro Russo handles it all without a blink. As far as I recall, I have not come across his name prior to encountering this CD, but I assure you, he is a pianist of extraordinary technical and artistic abilities. Captured in splendid sound on recordings dating from 2012 and 2013, this sixty-eight minute program will appeal to just about any music lover. If you enjoy the music of the composers you know here – Rachmaninov and perhaps Balakirev and Medtner – you will enjoy the entire program.

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Steve Arloff

This is a brilliant disc with a really arresting programme though with a couple of anomalies. I’m sure that Islameyis too well known to be considered a rarity while I trust the same can be said for Medtner’s Sonata No.1. As admitted in the booklet notes, Rózycki is not Russian, but these are small quibbles. While these works could have been replaced with other real rarities perhaps we can hope for more discs of such repertoire. Reading pianist Sandro Russo’s own notes later I see that he has pointed out that the Medtner Sonata is better known these days but only following recent “rediscovery” as he puts it and that Islamey is “widely performed”.

The disc opens with a true rarity in the shape of Skazka or Fairy Tale by Moldavian-Jewish composer Julius Isserlis (grandfather of cellist Steven Isserlis). I had never come across his music before and it is truly delightful but at a mere three minutes leaves you with all kinds of questions not least of which is ‘When can I hear some more?’. The answer lies in a disc only released in January 2014, Julius Isserlis: Piano Music played by Sam Heywood (piano) and Steven Isserlis (cello). It’s Hyperion CDA68025. The piece is charming, dreamy and elusive, evoking in my imagination a sparkling and gently flowing waterfall.

With Medtner I am in the musical equivalent of seventh heaven. When I listen to his piano music I always feel transported. He is one of my piano music heroes and his first piano sonata is one of my absolute favourites. It is the longest and most substantial work on the disc. Medtner began writing it while he was still studying at the Moscow Conservatoire under Taneyev and Arensky. He completed it, aged 23, in 1903, a staggering feat since the music is so mature in concept and execution. The opening Allegro is toweringly majestic and tempestuous demanding some thunderously played passages. Add to this an extremely memorable theme. The brief Intermezzo relieves the tension somewhat before the Largo divoto reveals the serious nature at the heart of the work with elements of spiritual reflection. With some plangent and pellucid moments you can almost ‘see’ into the composer’s soul. The finale marked Allegro risoluto draws the themes and ideas together and indeed resolves them as well as the conflict within them. Taken as a whole this sonata is quite extraordinary in its breadth of ideas and the emotional depths it plumbs. It is an example of a work that is pretty well perfect without a note too few or too many.

As the liner-notes point out one of the unifying themes of this disc is that all the music is by composer-pianists. They don’t come much more so than Sergei Taneyev whose pupils included Isserlis, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Glière and whose teachers were Nikolai Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. The Prelude and Fugue in G-Sharp Minor, Op.29 shows Taneyev’s devotion to Bach and the baroque in a quite breathtakingly virtuosic work that makes great demands on the pianist as he is driven at breakneck speed pell-mell towards its conclusion. It is a surprise that this work is the only significant one he wrote for solo piano. Taneyev’s pupil Rachmaninov, the quintessential romantic wrote his Piano Suite No.2 for two pianos. The two extracts here were transcribed for solo piano by Vladimir Leyetchkiss, one of the last pupils of the legendary Russian pianist-teacher Heinrich Neuhaus. They prove to be a wonderful thought-challenging vehicle for the solo pianist. I wondered if Leyetchkiss had transcribed the entire work which it would be great to hear.

Mily Balakirev’s Islamey is one of those works that have achieved an almost cult status, It is said to be among the most difficult works to play in the entire piano repertoire. The composer himself said there were passages in it that he found difficult to play. As a result it became the showpiece of various lions of the piano such as Nikolai Rubinstein, who premièred it, as well as Liszt and Scriabin, who seriously damaged his right hand while practising it, Moura Lympany, Vladimir Horowitz and John Ogdon. Ravel once told a friend that his aim in writing his Gaspard de la Nuit, another notoriously challenging work, was quite simply to have composed a piece that was “more difficult than Balakirev’s Islamey“. Cast in three distinct parts it was completed by Balakirev in a mere month in September 1869 which for him was a feat since he was well known for taking years to finish many of his compositions. After a hair-raising Allegro agitato with its introduction of a theme Balakirev heard while visiting the Caucasus, the second Tranquillo – Andantino espressivo introduces another but this time altogether quieter. This turns out to be the calm before the final storm which comes in the shape of the Allegro vivo – Presto furioso. This returns to the first theme for, as the marking denotes, a furious and frantic race to the finish. Many editions exist, several of them easier and some more difficult. It is unclear which this is but it is obvious that Sandro Russo is well up to any of the difficulties it puts in the pianist’s way.

The last two pieces are by two little known composers, the first by Nikolai Rakov is a Russian song in which the singer bemoans her parting from her beloved and that a mere day seems like a year. It is a charming little piece that like the Isserlis work simply whets one’s appetite for more. Ludomir Rózycki can be said to an interloper since he was Polish but as the notes explain he was well known and respected in Russia and indeed Russia controlled Poland before 1917 as part of its Empire. The waltz from his opera Casanova is another delightful little gem transcribed by Russian pianist Grigory Ginzburg, as was Rakov’s piece. For anyone who would like to hear more of his music I can recommend two discs of Rózycki’s piano music and chamber works that I reviewed a while back, both on Acte Préalable: APO253 and APO263.

American composer Lowell Liebermann is quoted on the reverse of this disc as saying that Sicilian-born Sandro Russo “is a musician’s musician, and a pianist’s pianist. There is no technical challenge too great for him, but it is his musicianship that ultimately makes the greatest impression”. I wholeheartedly concur save to add that after listening he is also, for me, a listener’s pianist. The quality of his playing cannot be disputed and listening to the Medtner with Geoffrey Tozer’s interpretation on Chandos for comparison I can find almost nothing between them. For me that is praise indeed.

The entire programme was a joy to hear and one I shall be revisiting it often. I hope Russo will be unearthing some more of these gems and if he does I shall be a happy bunny.

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TRANSLATION PIANOWERELD REVIEW OF “RUSSIAN GEMS” CD

Russian Gems by a Sicilian Wizard

The unpretentious Sicilian virtuoso Sandro Russo could hardly have chosen a more apt opening to his latest CD Russian Gems (produced partly in-house) than the totally unknown gem of Russian-Jewish composer Julian Isserlis (1888-1968). With preciously layered dynamics and a refined shade of pedal Russo weaves a magic carpet out of this seemingly trifle. How he does it ultimately remains a mystery. Real magic does not allow for simple explanations.

This album showcases a remarkable personality. Starting with the repertoire choice: The only really known work on this album is Mily Balakirev’s Islamey, the rest of the music is rarely, if ever heard in the concert hall. Russo sets sensationalism aside in order to focus on smooth voice leading. In Medtner’s rarely played sonata opus 5 Russo’s tempos follow the tune’s momentum. Fully floating on the natural stream of Medtner’s lyricism, he can even leave Marc-André Hamelin behind, when it comes to coherence. Hamelin plays the coda of the first movement with a lot of panache and many changes of pace, but it’s Russo who unveils the ingenious musical construction by keeping a tight rein on tempo and accentuation. The promise of the polyphonic Finale to Medtner’s sonata comes true in Russo’s rendition of Taneyev’s Prelude and Fugue opus 29. Russo may not have the physical strength of an Ashkenazy (Decca), but the awesome clarity with which he highlights the ferociously piled up voices creates a unique climax itself.

We had already encountered Vladimir Leyetchkiss’ very clever solo transcription of Rachmaninoff’s Suite Opus 17 on a CD by none other than Cyprien Katsaris (Piano 21). Russo plays the two middle parts Leyetchkiss initially issued. Again, the transparency and passion are of overpowering grace. Grigory Ginzburg transcriptions concluding this CD are just as little known in the West, as the miniature by Isserlis that opened this recital. Russo makes clear how unjust that situation is. By far the greatest musical injustice however is that the Dutch public will miss Sandro Russo live, as a result of our national concert organizer’s inexplicable neglect.

Elger Niels

Pianowereld (June/July issue)

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Luca Chierici

Il pianista siciliano Sandro Russo – residente a New York da una quindicina d’anni – è alla sua seconda fatica discografica assecondata dalla casa editrice americana “Musical Concepts” e si sposta da un primo terreno scarlattiano a uno dedicato a rarità pianistiche della musica russa. Qui le rarità ci sono davvero e Russo dimostra tra le altre cose di essere un intelligente topo di biblioteca interessato a riportare alla luce spartiti che altrimenti giacerebbero inutilizzati negli scaffali.

Il programma è tutto da descrivere anche perché fa riferimento addirittura ad autori sconosciuti ai più. Julius Isserlis (1888-1968), che tra parentesi è il nonno del famoso violoncellista Steven, scrive una interessante Skazka affiancandosi ai più noti lavori di questo tipo messi a punto da Medtner (il quale ultimo viene qui ricordato attraverso la sua prima Sonata op. 5). Nikolai Rakov (1908-1990), fedele al regime e nominato “Artista del popolo” compare nel cd attraverso una “Canzone russa” trascritta magistralmente da Grigori Ginzburg, autore anche della versione da concerto di un Valzer tratto dall’opera Casanova di Ludomir Rozycki (1883-1953). E ancora troviamo Sergej Taneyev con un austero e tecnicamente difficile Preludio e Fuga op. 29, e Rachmaninov con la ben nota Suite per due pianoforti op. 17 ma… trascritta per pianoforte solo da Vladimir Leyetchkiss appena nel 2009 (Sandro Russo ne estrapola il Waltz e la Romance).

Non tutto il contenuto di questo cd rappresenta una novità assoluta dal punto di vista editoriale (l’opera omnia di Isserlis è stata ad esempio incisa per la Hyperion dal pianista Sam Haywood ed esce sul mercato praticamente in contemporanea con questo disco) ma si tratta qui pur sempre di una scelta antologica davvero interessante. Quasi a ricordarci le sue doti di virtuoso ispirato, Russo chiude il programma con una bella esecuzione della famosissima Islamey di Balakirev, risolta con un suolo davvero squisito e una straordinaria cura dei particolari.

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