Credits:

Shostakovich, D.

Description:

Balakirev expressed his devotion to the composers he admired by arranging their works into pianistic solo pieces. Most of the pieces on this album, including world premiere recordings, are transcriptions of works by Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, and others, and the techniques employed include not only replacing pieces from orchestral works, string quartets, and operas for the piano, but sometimes adding codas to existing pieces or writing new pieces as material. In addition to replacing pieces from orchestral works, string quartets, and operas for the piano, he sometimes added codas to existing pieces, and sometimes wrote new pieces from scratch. Listening to these pieces, one can understand how much he respected his predecessors, can't one? The last piece, "Brilliant Polonaise," was written by Balakirev when he was 16-17 years old. It is the fruition of a boy's passionate yearning for music. Naxos Japan