 Compositeur russe maltraité par l’histoire, Medtner fut un compositeur majeur du vingtième siècle et la redécouverte progressive de son œuvre s’enrichit d’un nouvel opus grâce à Dina Parakhina. Celle-ci a la bonne idée d’interpréter des œuvres moins jouées du compositeur comme les deux sonates opus 25 composées en 1911, dix ans avant son exil définitif d’URSS. Si la première sonate est dédiée à son cousin Alexandre Goedicke (connu pour ses transcriptions pour piano d’œuvres de Bach), la seconde sonate est dédiée à Rachmaninov et nous éclaire non seulement sur leurs liens d’amitié et d’admiration mutuelle, mais aussi sur leurs affinités stylistiques héritées du 19ème siècle où la virtuosité demeure un moyen d’expression de l’âme russe. Alors que Prokofiev, Scriabine et Stravinski explorent de nouvelles voies plus novatrices, Medtner reste attaché à un romantisme nostalgique qui s’exprime aussi dans les six Contes de fées Opus 51 composés en 1928 qui ouvrent ce disque. Dina Parakhina maitrise parfaitement le langage de Medtner, à la fois complexe et émouvant en lui donnant un relief tout particulier par son dynamisme, et permettant une parfaite lisibilité à des œuvres à l’écriture parfois compliquée. (Jean-Noël Regnier) The two sonatas published by Medtner as his Opus 25 make a salutary contrast: the longest and most taxing of his sonatas placed alongside a sonatina-like work possibly intended for children. Apart from showing the range of the composer’s imagination and his capacity to build musical structures that show the most careful craftsmanship, these two sonatas reveal a view of the world that is very Medtnerian: a pairing of something childlike with the heroic and terrifying. ‘In Medtner you find the whole complexity of life,’ says Dina Parakhina. ‘He built his spiritual cathedrals out of chaos.’ Op.25 No.1 is known as the ‘Fairy Tale’ Sonata, and its four concise movements really do sound as if they deal with fairies, giants, witches and goblins. The Six Fairy Tales Op.51 further illuminate this side of Medtner’s musical personality. Dina Parakhina hears a Russian figure of the Fool in No.2, and Cinderella in the balletic turns of No.3, ‘the most lyrical, elegant and feminine in style’ and perhaps a portrait of his wife. Medtner prefaced the mighty Op.25 No.2 Sonata with a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev: ‘Night wind, night wind, why do you howl?’ Longer than half an hour, this single movement invites comparison with the B minor Sonata of Liszt and the final sonata of Beethoven as a summit of late-Romantic piano literature, which absorbs tempests and idylls within his personal synthesis of German, contrapuntal rigour and Russian lyricism. The Russian-born pianist Dina Parakhina has Medtner’s music in her blood and under her fingers, as a student at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire at the top of a class which included Mikhail Pletnev. She became a professor of piano there before moving to the UK, where she teaches at the Royal College of Music and Royal Northern College, as well as performing around the country.
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