Nikolaj Medtner

6 Fairy Tales Op. 51

Nicolas Medtner was born on January 5, 1880 in Moscow and died November 13, 1951 in London. After his piano studies he took private composition lessons with Sergej Tanejew. He worked as a composer, teacher and pianist; concert tours (where he almost entirely performed his own works) led him to Europe and to North America. In his final years, the Maharaja of Mysore financed Medtner's numerous recordings. For some years now, his work has been increasingly attracting attention, especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Medtner's music forms a bridge between the traditional Moscow School (Tchaikovsky) and the classical-romantic German music. Most of his piano works are extremely virtuoso. The Fairy Tales op. 51 were composed in 1928 and are strongly based on the folk music of his Russian home country - maybe this is an expression of isolation and rootlessness he feels in his self-imposed exile. The revised edition of the Fairy Tales op. 51 is based on the first print, published by Wilhelm Zimmermann in Leipzig in 1929. It considers the handwritten comments N. Medtner himself added to his own copy of this edition, based on the print of the Soviet complete edition.