Nikolai Medtner’s piano music at first glance seems derivative of Rachmaninov—it’s at the limits of Romanticism, harmonically and contrapuntally dense, intensely chromatic but not quite modernist, and so utterly Russian. But there are several distinguishing factors of Medtner’s music that propells it head and shoulders above the rather played out sea of late Romanticism.

Most striking in Medtner’s piano writing is its relentless, unabating, flow. What may sound like inexorable note-spinning at first listen belies a wonderfully taut organicism and unity of direction. There is an inevitability to his music; one phrase always leads to the next, and it’s only after the coda does the pianist really get a chance to catch their breath. And catch their breath they must—Medtner rarely missed the chance to write a dazzling, devastating coda, one that combines all the previous thematic material into a fiendish ball of fury.

10. Sonata Op.5 (8)
0:00 Mvt.I, Lucas Debargue
0:20 Mvt.IV, Lucas Debargue

9. Sonata Op.39 No.5, “Tragica” (8)
1:35 Yevgeny Subdin

8. Sonata Op.30, “War Sonata” (8)
2:31 Severin von Eckardstein

7. Piano Concerto No.1, Op.33 (8+)
3:11 Mvt.I, Geoffrey Tozer
3:57 Mvt.II, Geoffrey Tozer

6. Sonata Op.27, "Ballade" (8+)
5:09 Mvt.III, Nikolai Medtner
6:08 Mvt.III, Geoffrey Tozer

5. Piano Concerto No.2, Op.50 (8+)
7:31 Mvt.III, Geoffrey Tozer

4. Sonata Op.53 No.1, “Romantica” (8+)
8:50 Mvt.II, Vasily Gvozdetsky

3. Sonata Op.53 No.2, "Minacciosa" (8+)
9:51 Marc-André Hamelin

2. Piano Concerto No.3, Op.60 “Ballade” (8+)
10:53 Mvt.II Nikolai Medtner
11:53 Mvt.III Michael Ponti

1. Sonata Op.25 No.2, "Night Wind" (8++)
12:27 Vadim Kholodenko
13:18 Severin von Eckardstein
14:02 Marc-André Hamelin

Honorable mentions: Improvisations Op.47, Sonata Op.22, Sonata Op.25 No.1 “Skazka”

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