Nikolai Medtner - Legacy

Legacy

Geoffrey Tozer recorded almost all of Medtner's works for the piano including all the concertos and sonatas. Hamish Milne has recorded most of the solo piano works, while Geoffrey Douglas Madge and Konstantin Scherbakov have recorded the three piano concertos. Other pianists who championed Medtner's work and left behind recordings include Benno Moiseiwitsch, Sviatoslav Richter, Edna Iles, Emil Gilels, Yevgeny Svetlanov and Earl Wild. In modern times, pianists noted for their advocacy include Marc-André Hamelin, Malcolm Binns, Irina Mejoueva, Nikolai Demidenko, Boris Berezovsky, Paul Stewart, Dmitri Alexeev, Andrey Ponochevny and Yevgeny Sudbin. The last 20 years have seen a big increase in recording activity, if not in live performances, and the solo piano and chamber music discography is looking quite healthy.

Far fewer singers have tackled the songs. Medtner himself recorded a selection with the sopranos Oda Slobodskaya, Tatiana Makushina, Margaret Ritchie and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. In recent times Susan Gritton and Ludmilla Andrew have recorded complete CDs with Geoffrey Tozer, as has Caroline Vitale with Peter Baur. The bass-baritone Vassily Savenko has recorded a considerable number of Medtner songs with Boris Berezovsky, Alexander Blok and Victor Yampolsky. A handful of other singers have included Medtner songs in compilations; particularly notable are historic recordings by Zara Dolukhanova and Irina Arkhipova. However many songs are not available on CD, and some await their first recording.

Medtner recorded piano rolls of some of his works for Welte-Mignon in 1923 and Duo-Art in 1925.