There are composers who only find themselves after years of wandering, and there are those who, like Nikolaj Medtner (1880-1951), bring their voice already almost fully mature at the moment they first speak. Taneyev, his teacher at the Moscow Conservatory, once said that Medtner was "born with the sonata form" – a statement that, after listening to this new recording by Diego Petrella, hardly sounds exaggerated. At a time when Russian musical life was dominated by the colorful orchestral imagination of Rimski-Korsakov, the dramatic worlds of Tsjaikovski and later the revolutionary language of Skrjabin, Medtner chose a different path: that of absolute music, rooted in classical forms but permeated by an explicit Russian emotional world. Da Vinci Classics brings together with Piano Sonatas I the Sonata in f minor op. 5, the complete Sonata Triad op. 11 and the Sonata in g minor op. 22: not an arbitrary selection, but the chronicle of a calling that unfolds over a few years.
The first contours of a master
Whoever hears Medtner's Sonata in f minor op. 5 for the first time, immediately notices that this is no novice searching for his voice. The four movements – unusual for a composer who would later indeed glorify the organic unity of the sonata – show a young Medtner still experimenting with classical plurality, but already possessing a remarkable sense of thematic development and inner coherence. The opening Allegro writhes through restless questions that find no answer, interspersed with those resonating bell figures so characteristic of Russian imagination. Petrella resists the temptation to immediately force this into climax; he lets the tension breathe, gives the silences between phrases as much weight as the notes themselves.
The subsequent Intermezzo: Allegro brings another side of Medtner's personality to the fore: lighter in touch, more mobile and almost playful, but never without underlying nervousness. Petrella finds here precisely the right tone between elegance and inner tension; the virtuosity remains transparent and lively, while the dark undercurrents of the music are not smoothed over. In the Largo divoto, where the music then folds into a kind of sacred sarabande, the pianist knows how to find that choral heaviness without stiffening into devotion – a balance that not every Medtner interpreter masters. Here Petrella sounds particularly convincing: where the music tends toward silence, he lets the sound fade without losing its tension; where the melody grabs at the throat, emotion arises not through emphasis, but through a deep understanding of the inner movement of the phrase.
The Finale: Allegro risoluto forms no simple triumphant resolution, but a final trial of strength in which the energy of the opening movement and the hushed seriousness of the Largo divoto come together. Petrella chooses a resolute but never superficial ending: the rhythmic force remains connected to the dramatic line of the entire work. Where the music must become stormy, he lets it break loose; where doubt and tension continue to hide behind the virtuosity, he keeps them palpable. In this way no demonstration of pianistic mastery emerges, but the portrait of a young composer who already in his first published sonata knows how to unite a world of contrasts and in Petrella has found an interpreter who brings this early world back to life with fresh perspective and deep understanding.
An altarpiece in three panels
The Sonata Triad op. 11 is perhaps the heart of this recording, and not by coincidence. Inspired by Goethe's poem Aussöhnung, these three self-contained sonatas – heard in succession – create the impression of three panels of the same altarpiece. Reconciliation – between struggle and rest, between darkness and light – forms the hidden dramaturgy of the cycle, both poetically and musically. Here Medtner continually tests the boundaries of pianistic capability, without the virtuosity ever becoming detached from expressive necessity. The technical challenges – the complex polyphony, the layered rhythm, the continual interplay between voices that complement, contradict and rediscover each other – are for him not obstacles to be overcome, but means by which an inner world is revealed.
Precisely in this continual interplay between outward virtuosity and inner necessity lies the challenge of this cycle. Petrella demonstrates here not only astounding technical mastery, but especially the ability to subordinate every difficulty of the score to the musical thought behind it. His playing possesses the clarity to make Medtner's often densely woven contrapuntal architecture audible, but also the freedom to let the music breathe and speak. Nowhere does one get the feeling that the pianist wants to parade the technical obstacles of the score; on the contrary, precisely because everything seems so self-evident, it becomes clear how much control, insight and imagination lie behind this interpretation. For Petrella, virtuosity never becomes an end in itself, but a means to unlock the many layers of Medtner's musical universe.
The first sonata of the triad, in A-flat major, opens with an almost childlike simplicity that Petrella never lets sound naïve – here the joy is earned, not given. Beneath the apparent clarity, one constantly feels the memory of the struggle that preceded it; the pianist lets us hear that Medtner's lyricism is never superficial, but always nourished by a deeper awareness of human vulnerability. In the Sonata-Elegy in d minor, the emotional center of the triad, Petrella colors the shadow of the Dies irae so restrainedly that it becomes more a memory than a quotation. The dark colors, the long tension arcs and the hushed moments take on a natural intensity under his hands: nowhere is the tragedy heightened, but for that very reason it strikes all the more powerfully.
And the third sonata, in C major, con passione innocente – an instruction that few pianists dare take literally – sounds truly innocent under Petrella's hands, without ever becoming foolish. Here too, it is not only the astounding finger dexterity with which the pianist masters the most demanding passages that convinces, but especially the way he lets an intention be heard behind every note. The virtuosic movements take on something of spontaneous joy, as if the music discovers itself as it sounds. With Petrella, this final sonata becomes no superficial liberation, but the natural endpoint of a musical journey on which struggle, reflection and joy ultimately merge into one whole.
Toward the organic sonata
With the Sonate in g minor op. 22, Medtner chooses an uninterrupted musical arc in which darkness and light, doubt and conviction, stillness and outburst seem to flow organically from one another. That this particular sonata would later become Medtner's most performed work hardly comes as a surprise. From the dark Tenebroso opening, the entire sonata seems already contained in the opening gesture. Petrella allows that long arc of tension to unfold almost organically, as if each new idea inevitably flows from what came before. He refuses to divide the music into separate episodes, but continuously guards its great architecture, so that the uninterrupted form retains its full convincing power. His playing remains notably clear: even in the most densely written passages, the different voices maintain their own contours, without the natural flow of the music ever being interrupted.
Paired with that clarity is Petrella's infallible sense of proportion. Climaxes are never played prematurely or emphatically announced, but grow naturally from the preceding material. The dark passages retain their threatening intensity without becoming heavy, while the lyrical moments, precisely because of this, shine all the more brightly. Here too, Petrella's impressive technique is never an end in itself, but a natural means to make Medtner's great line of tension audible. This sonata thus unfolds not as a succession of impressive pianistic moments, but as one breathing musical idea that maintains its inner logic from the first to the last measure.
A living dialogue with Medtner
Diego Petrella is not the obvious name for this repertoire. Trained at the Milan Conservatory and artistically shaped by encounters with, among others, Sylvano Bussotti and the experimental traditions surrounding Fluxus, he brings a musical background that seems far removed from Medtner's late-romantic world. Yet this apparent distance from Medtner's world turns out to be ultimately the greatest strength of this recording. Petrella approaches this music not as a historical monument that must be reverently reconstructed, but as a living score that continuously gains new meaning in the moment of performance. This keeps his interpretation continually in motion: analytical where the structure demands it, free where the music needs space, but always true to the organic development that makes Medtner's sonatas so unique.
Whether this recording will dethrone the established references – think of Hamelin or Demidenko – is less important than the question of what place it occupies within the growing Medtner discography. As the first installment of a planned complete recording, this is above all a very promising calling card. Petrella treats these early sonatas not as youthful works in which the later master announces himself cautiously, but as fully realized musical worlds, each possessing its own character and dramaturgy. In doing so, Petrella convincingly demonstrates why these sonatas, and their composer, deserve a much more prominent place in the great piano repertoire. Those who listen to this disc will hear not only a young Medtner who already speaks his own language with surprisingly maturity, but also a pianist who brings that language to sound so naturally that it scarcely sounds like a historical curiosity anymore, but as living music that still has something essential to tell us today.