This first volume of Alexander Tcherepnin’s extensive list of works for piano takes us from some of his earliest works as a precocious Russian teenager, through to significant and intensely expressive compositions. Each work is a gold mine of astoundingly inventive and distinctively individual craftsmanship.

The program demonstrates Tcherepnin’s mastery of the miniature and the monumental, speaking to the heart from a basis in the Romantic tradition. Tcherepnin’s is a voice which stands comparison with Prokofiev and at times Rachmaninov, but the over-riding impression is of striking individuality and compelling inventiveness.

A lifelong pioneer in new composition techniques, Tcherepnin was also an enthusiastic internationalist whose fascination with folk idioms brought him through Eurasian culture to Far Eastern influences. Although he remained fundamentally Russian in his writing, he devised a new synthetic scale and made use of the Chinese scale. Married to a Chinese pianist, he wrote six piano concertos and four symphonies, returning to Russian themes in his final Russian Sketches of 1971.

Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer based in Lugano, Switzerland. Born in Prague in 1953, he studied at the State Music School and Conservatory before moving to Switzerland in 1968 and continuing his studies at the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan. Koukl is now considered to be one of the world‘s leading interpreters of Martinů’s piano music, having recorded the composer’s complete solo piano music, piano concertos and a disc of Martinů’s vocal music.

World Première Recordings of:
- 9 Inventions, Op.13
- 10 Études, Op.18