SKU: HL.48025020

ISBN 9781784546250.

Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940), hitherto consigned to a footnote in musical history as Stravinsky's piano teacher, is undergoing rediscovery. A double graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, she emerged as a virtuoso pianist and composer in the romantic tradition. She was associated with some of the great musicians of her day, including Mily Alexayevich Balakirev and Leopold von Auer. She performed in both Germany and the UK in the 1900s, but her career petered out after 1920. These new editions of the Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 have been broadcast and recorded, whilst new editions of her Symphony and hitherto unpublished Piano Concerto have recently been issued. Kashperova's Romantic empathy with nature and childhood may be keenly observed in her chamber music and songs. The six-movement piano suite In the Midst of Nature (1910) in no exception in the way it uses evocations of nature to express nostalgia for her childhood in the peaceful and remote Russian countryside. In the Midst of Nature also resents an artfully graded progression, indicating that Kashperova probably shared this music with her many pupils: the early movements are within the range of the talented young player whilst the latter movements require the technique and interpretative maturity of a conservatoire student, the whole work being admirably suited to the professional recital.

SKU: HL.48025215

UPC: 196288133438.

Er Huang was commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New York where, in 2009, it received its world premiere with solo pianist Lang Lang and the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. Chen wrote about the work, 'Music has its own life – for me the germination of any musical work is like a tree growing out of the ground, and the eventual outcome of this life is entirely unknowable in advance.' Commenting on the connection between Er Huang and its source of inspiration, the Er Huang tunes from the classical Peking Opera repertoire, he says that, 'the way I applied musical elements from Peking Opera to my own writing was not really based on musicological studies. Rather, these tunes were an essential part of my childhood in Beijing, and always intertwined with memories of my family and the society I lived in at the time. Many people from my generation would be able to hum these tunes by heart. These days, however, these familiar tunes have been almost entirely forgotten, as the younger generation is much more occupied by western pop culture. This is why, when I quote these tunes, I often do so with a great sense of nostalgia. Traditional Chinese music has a very strong character, and the organic assimilation of something that I feel most akin to, over time, into my own musical language, has become an essential part of my artistic expression.'.