The Complete Piano Music. Vols. 1 & 2

Abstract

Those who knew Mily Balakirev (1837-1910) agreed almost to a person that he was an odd, despotic, dogmatic and ultimately tragic figure. At the height of his creativity and influence during the turbulent and exciting 1860s, when Russia was emerging from centuries of serfdom and democratic ideas were transforming the social and cultural landscape, he was (despite his relative youth) recognized both at home and abroad as one of the country's most significant and innovative pianists and composers. Balakirev's piano pieces, especially the exotic Islamey, even captured the fancy of Franz Liszt, who had his students learn and perform it. At the same time, Balakirev was the acknowledged philosophical-ideologi-cal leader of the moguchaya kuchka ("mighty handful"), a group of five nationalistic Russian composers in St Petersburg. Along with Balakirev and the largely forgotten Cesar Cui, the members included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky, who would among them largely deter¬mine the subsequent course of Russian music for the remainder of the century and beyond. Balakirev, who had come to St Petersburg from his native Nizhny-Novgorod in 1855, made a deep impression on the teenaged Rimsky-Korsakov when they first met in the capital in the early 1860s. "Young, with marvelous fiery eyes that were in constant movement, with a beautiful beard, speaking deci¬sively, with authority and directness" is how Rimsky-Korsakov later described him. He was "ready at any moment for wonderful improvisations on the piano, could remember every measure he had ever heard, and could memorize almost instantaneously any compositions that were played for him. No one else possessed the kind of aura he did. Although he would appreciate the smallest sign of talent in others, he could not at the same time help feeling how far superior he was; the other person was also aware of his superiority. Balakirev's influence on those who surrounded him was unbounded."