Michael Brown – Noctuelles (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:49 minutes | 1018 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © First Hand Records
My apologies to Maurice Ravel, but the focus of this review will lie squarely on the music of Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951). Not that Miroirs by Maurice Ravel is not a great piece of music. It’s actually one of his most inspired and innovative works for solo piano, but given the fact that it is already well known and benefits from over 60 extant recordings as opposed to only one (as far as I know) of the Medtner, I figured more ink (or in this case binary bits) should be spent trying to shed more light on the music of this unjustifiably neglected Russian composer of German descent. Both works deal within the realm of fantasy in an effort to capture the essence of mysterious subjects like night moths, birds, bells, nymphs, water, goblins and elves, but from completely differing perspectives. Ravel painting an impressionistic image based on visual or physical triggers, and Medtner trying to convey the metaphysical aspects an image impresses on the soul.
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