Kelvin H. F. Lee

Despite the enduring interest in Medtner’s music, the 1st Piano Concerto, Op. 33 (1914–18) has attracted surprisingly little attention comparing to his piano sonatas and skazki. Although it is often considered as the culmination of Medtner’s earlier attempts at large-scale single-movement form, the significance of the Concerto in both Medtner’s oeuvre and the history of the piano concerto is largely overshadowed by the success of its fin-de-siècle Russian contemporaries. This is perhaps due to the unfavourable reception of Op. 33, in which Medtner was criticised for his technical incompetence. Boris Asafiev, while praising Medtner’s characteristic melos, complains about the Concerto’s overall lack of coherence. He contends that its episodic formal organisation (engendered by the variations that function as a sonata development) halts “the forward movement” and disturbs “our capacity to fathom the development of the music over the whole expanse of it.” This ‘overload’ of episodes arguably obscures Medtner’s musical intention and thereby leads Asafiev to aver that the same strategy produces a “more directly enchanting and unpremeditated” effect in the sonatas and the skazki […].