This first volume of Alexander Tcherepnin’s extensive list of works for piano takes us from some of his earliest works as a precocious Russian teenager, through to significant and intensely expressive compositions. From the vitally youthful picture stories of the Bagatelles, through the remarkable Sonatas to the exploratory late Ascension, each work is a gold mine of astoundingly inventive and distinctively individual craftsmanship The program demonstrates Tcherepnin’s mastery of the miniature and the monumental, speaking to the heart from a basis in the Romantic tradition. Tcherepnin’s is a voice which stands comparison with Prokofiev and at times Rachmaninov, but the over-riding impression is of striking individuality and compelling inventiveness.
