János Palojtay Piano Recital Presented by Liszt Academy

Of the three most important composers of the first golden age of Russian piano music, Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Medtner, the latter is unfortunately still hardly known in Hungary. The piano played a prominent role in his rich oeuvre, and his sonatas, piano concertos, character pieces and songs are very special representatives of late Romanticism in the decades of modernism. Not for nothing has Medtner been called the “Russian Brahms”: his style, his way of thinking, the concentration and density of his piano works do recall the piano music of Schumann and Brahms. Medtner himself noted with wry humour that ‘I was born a hundred years later’. But in 1921 Rachmaninov did not mince his words: ‘In my opinion, you are the greatest composer of our time.’ The composer, who died in London in 1951, has had his works performed by such luminaries as Sviatoslav Richter, Boris Berezovsky, Evgeny Kissin and Daniil Trifonov.