Lovers of pianism can vividly imagine some performers of the past: the rock star Liszt, the glowering Rachmaninov. That's less true of Leopold Godowsky, even though for the first three decades of the 20th century, he was one of the world's best-known and best-paid pianists. This release from pianist Andrey Gugnin aims to change that situation, offering a selection of works dedicated to the great Lithuanian. The most famous such dedication of all, the Polka de W.R. of Rachmaninov, is not included because, as the annotations ...
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Lovers of pianism can vividly imagine some performers of the past: the rock star Liszt, the glowering Rachmaninov. That's less true of Leopold Godowsky, even though for the first three decades of the 20th century, he was one of the world's best-known and best-paid pianists. This release from pianist Andrey Gugnin aims to change that situation, offering a selection of works dedicated to the great Lithuanian. The most famous such dedication of all, the Polka de W.R. of Rachmaninov, is not included because, as the annotations say, there were many more unknown pieces that presented themselves, and the Polka is anything but unknown. However, that work might have broken up the sequence of basically similar pieces; the program breaks out into heroic music only a few times, notably with the Grand Etude de Paganini in G sharp minor ("La Campanella") of Liszt. The rest consists of elaborated Chopin étude-type pieces, some of which are of considerable interest. Try the Troisičme étude orientale (en quartes) of...
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