GD 117 MODEST MUSSORGSKY- Pictures at an Exhibition, Ivo VARBANOV piano
Issued: 1997
Style: Classical Music
Company: Gega New, GD117
Since the age of nine, Ivo VARBANOV (b. 1972) has been living and performing mainly abroad, in Milan and London, at The Royal Academy of Music, where he specialised on a grant by the Rotary Foundation (USA). He has given concerts in many countries throughout Europe. For his Bulgarian CD the pianist has chosen Mussorgsky's masterpiece Pictures at an Exhibition. This work not only poses to the performer various difficulties with respect to technique and interpretation, but it requires a truthful rendition of the great Russian composer's unique style, a thorough understanding of the work's rich and vivid imagery, together with an ability to construct a monumental cycle serving as points of support to the overall structure. The listener will feel the scope of Varbanov's performance who is beyond doubt a talented pianist with brilliant technique who has probed deeply in Mussorgsky's style. Each of the pictures carries a monumental character and ideas of its own, rendered with a great variety of timbres, nuances, dynamics and strokes, while the famous theme of "Promenade" turns the finale of the work into a sound emanation of the Russian spirit, of the great "Knight's Gate" (in Kiev, the ancient Russian capital).
Contents:
• Promenade
• Gnomus
• Promenade
• Il vecchio castello
• Promenade
• Tuileries. (Dispute d'enfants apres jeux)
• Bydio
• Promenade
• Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
• Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuyle
• Promenade
• Limoges. Le marche
• Catacombae. Con mortuis in lingua mortua
• The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba-Yaga)
• The Knight's Gate (in the Ancient Capital, Kiev)
• A Tear
• Meditation
• Night on the Bare Mountain
• Scene from "Sorochintsy Fair"
• Hopak
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