# Pianist - Virtuoso A.Sheludyakov



## Alviko

Great performance of Russian classical Music


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## Alviko

Reviewing Stephen Coombs's Arensky potpourri a few years back, Lawrence Johnson damned the music with faint praise as “charming if lightweight morsels.” It would be foolhardy to call upon this 1894 cycle to challenge his description. True, the anonymous notes, quoting Arensky's pupil Goldenweiser, point to the work's exalted pedigree: It was “inspired by I. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.” But the high-minded nature of the model was offset by an almost parlor-game approach to composition. As Goldenweiser describes it, Arensky “sketched 24 themes” in advance, and “placed each one… into a vase. Each morning he would pick one theme out of the vase and compose that particular piece that very day.” Nor do such titles as “Butterfly,” “The Top,” and “Springtime's Reverie” inspire confidence that the Bach influence runs deep. More The Art of the Cute than The Art of the Fugue.
Yet for all its slightness, it's far from negligible. The cycle opens with a gesturally bold, harmonically poignant, chorale-tinged Prelude with a paradoxical combination of nostalgia and hope that's unexpectedly enthralling. And while, as the cycle dances deftly through all the major and minor keys, we don't run into anything else on quite the same level, there's still plenty of memorable music here: the soft, harmonic caresses of the Nocturne (which could easily be taken for one of the earlier works by Arensky's recalcitrant pupil Scriabin), the odd dissonances of the sternly polyphonic “In Olden Style,” the verdant harmonies of the “Springtime Reverie,” and the magnificently turned phrasing of “Andante and Variation.” There's also a fair amount of generic note-spinning and of what Johnson aptly called “melodic swooning”; and the influences of Chopin and especially Schumann (the “March” cribs shamelessly from the middle movement of the “Fantasy”) sometimes show too clearly. But more often than not, the music is melodically inventive and full of harmonic and rhythmic surprises, and it's inevitably polished in a way that belies the almost casual way it was conceived.
Anatoly Sheludiakov (sic), born in Moscow in 1955, plays expressively, with a fine sense of dynamics and phrasing-and although he's a bit too heavy on “The Dream,” elsewhere he plays with an enviable sensitivity to color and touch. I certainly hope that Angelok1 has further recording plays for him. The instrument has been well recorded, too. All in all, a welcome release for lovers of the Russian Silver Age.

Peter J. Rabinowitz
Fanfare Magazine


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## Alviko

*corrected site address*



Alviko said:


> Great performance of Russian classical Music


corrected site address
Sorry, the site switched hosting. Now everything is correct.
Anatoly Sheludyakov Music


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## Alviko

Huge update on the site classical music. All music is completely


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## Alviko

Stravinsky's Piano Works. CD review on Classic at MusicWeb
A disc featuring Stravinsky's collected works for solo piano is a very good idea. Although he spent a few years after the First World War developing a career as a pianist, in truth this was never a particularly significant part of his musical life; more a matter of earning a living when the royalties from his publishers had dried up.
Anatoly Sheludyakov is a pianist of secure technique who understands the sometimes brittle nature of Stravinsky’s musical style. Accordingly he can command the required level of virtuosity in the most technically demanding of these pieces, the Three Movements from Petrushka that Stravinsky rewrote from the original orchestral score for the young Artur Rubinstein. The performance is secure and at times glittering, though the recorded sound has less depth of perspective than the music really demands. Also the full-toned climaxes have less body than, for example, the much praised rival version by Maurizio Pollini (DG) that remains the benchmark recording.
Next on the programme is the delightful The Five Fingers from the same year, 1921. As the title suggests, the approach here could hardly be more different, and Sheludyakov's well articulated performance communicates very directly. Perhaps his rendition of the Piano Rag Music seems a shade under-characterised, but it is clear-textured and makes its point. For all its brevity this is a highlight among Stravinsky's piano compositions. The other short pieces, some of them really requiring a second player at the keyboard, were presumably performed twice by Sheludyakov, one part at a time, and then pasted together in the studio. It is easy for the critic to be sniffy about these things (and I am) but if the result is satisfying on disc, then no matter. The engaging Serenade of 1925 is nicely characterised too.
The other major work, albeit only some ten minutes long, is Stravinsky's Piano Sonata, composed in 1924 and another project of his performing career. As one might expect, this is a neo-classical composition from this master of the genre. The highlight is the delightful Adagietto central movement.
The disc is supported by useful documentation, though a more careful proofing process would have ironed out a handful of mistakes and inconsistencies.

Terry Barfoot
Classic at MusicWeb


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