MEDTNER PIANO CONCERTI
and various chamber works for piano

The Nikolai Medtner piano concerti are big, powerful works.  They should be in the concerto repertoire and I am pleased to note that a growing number of younger pianists are in fact performing and recording them.

The apparent difficulty is that they are in a sense oddities for their straddling of the Romantic and Modern eras.  While giving every appearance of being romantic piano concerti, they do not offer the melodic richness found in the Rachmaninoff concerti, with the exception of the 4th, which would suffer similarly were the first three, and Rachmaninoff himself, not so immensely popular.  But they are indeed mature works of great wonder and merit, and as with all good music, repeated listening will make this apparent.

The first of the Medtner piano concerti, a war time work written between 1914 and 1918, is essentially in one movement which can be divided into four sections.  With nods to Liszt and Brahms as well as to the modern, the structure is very convincing, though complex, and requires a degree of familiarity to appreciate.

The second of the Medtner piano concerti (1920-1927) is dedicated to Sergei Rachmaninoff, who reciprocated by dedicating his own fourth piano concerto to Medtner.  It is in the same key as Rachmaninoff's second concerto and begins every bit as dramatically, though in a very different fashion.  This concerto is more accessible than the first from the initial measures.  The opening Toccata is gripping, and the influence of Rachmaninoff more apparent.  However, Medtner's language has also evolved and one never has the impression of listening to a derivative work.

Instead of melody, this second of the Nikolai Medtner concerti uses rhythm to get the listener's attention, and it is successful in accomplishing just that.  Like a great wine, there are brief hints of other flavors, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, of course, even Carl Nielsen and Richard Strauss, and Brahms again.

For those who like to read into things, one could draw a parallel between Medtner and Rachmaninoff both of whose first essays in this form were a bit too advanced for their time, and whose second attempts were, in a word, fabulosi.

The third of the Medtner Piano Concerti (1940-43) is another big work, this time in three connected movements.  The writing for piano is often more in the language of Rachmaninoff and more blatantly melodic as well.  This is an unabashedly romantic concerto which arrived perhaps too late in Medtner's Lexicon.

Were you to ask me if I believe Nilolai Medtner to be a composer as great as Rachmaninoff, I would reply unequivocally that I do not. In my opinion, few are.  Nonetheless, Medtner is a composer of the first rank, and wrote infinitely better music than did the endless parade of deservedly forgotten composers whose works are laid before us at regular intervals.  The fact is that most forgotten composers are deserving of their posthumous fate.  Nikolai Medtner is decidedly not.  It is more than likely that timing was his biggest enemy.

Of the chamber works below, the most stunning is the Piano Quintet. Medtner began to sketch the work in 1903 and worked on all his life, finally completing it several years before his death.  I am considerably less enthusiastic about his works for violin and piano.

Piano Concerto 1 in C minor, Op 33 (1914–18)
Nikolai Medtner, piano
George Weldon conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra of London

recorded in 1947