Nikolai Medtner

Medtner's music combines late-Romantic pianistic richness with an almost Brahmsian structural density and contrapuntal rigor. His themes are long-breathed and songlike, but their development is intensely worked — ideas transform and interweave with an organic complexity that rewards repeated listening. His harmonic language is tonal but chromatic and endlessly inventive, avoiding both Scriabin's mysticism and Rachmaninoff's sweet melancholy in favor of something more austere and intellectually bracing.

A close friend and peer of Rachmaninoff, who tirelessly championed his music and funded a recording project in Medtner's final years. He revered Beethoven above all and saw himself as carrying forward the German Romantic tradition through Russian soil. His teachers included Taneyev (the great contrapuntist) and Safonov at the Moscow Conservatory. He rejected modernism in all forms, which isolated him from musical fashion but preserved his artistic integrity.

His early works (the first Fairy Tales, early sonatas) established his distinctive voice in pre-Revolutionary Moscow. He left Russia in 1921 and settled eventually in London, where he composed in increasing obscurity. His works grew more complex and concentrated through the 1920s and 30s. His late recordings, made in poor health, capture a still-formidable pianist playing music of extraordinary depth and personal conviction.

Rachmaninoff considered Medtner the superior composer of the two and campaigned to get his music better known. He financially supported Medtner's recording sessions for HMV in London during the late 1940s, ensuring that the ailing composer's own interpretations of his music would survive. Rachmaninoff's generosity was extraordinary — the world's most famous pianist championing his less-famous friend's music above his own.

Medtner's three Piano Concertos are major works that deserve to stand alongside Rachmaninoff's in the repertoire. The Third, especially, is a vast, powerful single-movement work of symphonic ambition that is gradually gaining advocates among pianists seeking fresh concerto repertoire.

Medtner has a passionate cult following among pianists and connoisseurs, and his music is gaining ground steadily. Marc-André Hamelin, Daniil Trifonov, and other major pianists have championed his works. The Fairy Tales and the Sonata-Reminiscenza appear with increasing frequency on recital programs. The concertos are still rare but each performance generates enthusiastic response. He's the quintessential 'underrated' composer — once audiences hear him, they want more.