Sonata-Ballade

Nikolai Medtner was praised by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Dmitri Shostakovich as one of the greatest musicians of his time. The brilliant pianist and composer left Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and found his second home in England. Pianist Emanuele Delucchi presents three representative works: the Sonate-Ballade, whose extra-musical inspiration can be found in the gospel episode of Christ's temptation in the desert, the Sonate-Idyll, whose relatively simple form reflects Medtner's tendency towards religious symbolism, and the Second Book of Forgotten Melodies, which explores the full range of his emotional and affective palette.