N. K. Medtner. Statue by K. Vogel. 1940s.
Nikolay Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer, teacher and pianist. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 190) as a piano student of Vasily Il’ich Safonov (having previously studied with Pavel Avgustovich Pabst and Vasily L’vovich Sapelnikov). He studied music theory with Nikolay Dmitrievich Kashkin, Antony Stepanovich Arensky and Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev. He gave concerts and recitals in Russia and abroad, including his own compositions into his own repertoire.
He was invited to join the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory as a professor in 1909 and taught there in the 1909-1910 academic year and then in 1915-1921. His students included Leopold Genrikhovich Lukomsky and Abram Vladimirovich Shatskes. Medtner’s musical compositions are predominantly written in the genres of solo piano and chamber music. In 1921 he left Russia to live abroad. He toured in various European countries, as well as in the USA, Canada and the USSR. From 1936 he lived in Great Britain, where his music enjoyed success.
His compositions include three concertos for piano and orchestra (1918, 1927, 1943); works for chamber ensembles; 14 piano sonatas, including the Sonata-Fairy Tale and the Sonata-Ballade), ten cycles of Fairy Tales and vocal works (32 songs to the texts of Aleksandr Pushkin, 15 songs to the texts of Feodor Tutchev and 30 songs to the texts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe); compositions for violin and piano (three sonatas, three Nocturnes, etc).
