This recording hides a remarkable detective story. In 1925–26 the French publisher Heugel brought out three volumes of 24 songs by the young Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), all setting poems by the ‘Acmeist’ Russian poet, Sergei Gorodetsky (1884–1967) – Tcherepnin’s opp. 15, 16 and 17. Not until 2014, when Tatyana Kebuladze, the pianist on this recording, examined the composer’s manuscript in the archives of the Sacher Foundation in Basel was it realised that those three recueils were the tips of a much larger iceberg: a cycle of 35 settings of the 37 poems in Gorodetsky’s collection My Flowering Staff, plus an anonymous epilogue – one of the most extensive song-cycles in musical history. The songs themselves are audibly in the tradition of Tchaikovsky and other such Romantic Russian composers, but with a degree of psychological insight conveyed through the harmonic piquancy typical of the new century.

Russian-American soprano Inna Dukach made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2018 in the title role of Madama Butterfly, and in 2010 she made her debut with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden as Musetta in La bohème. Born in Moscow, she was raised in New York, earning an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Smith College in Massachusetts, and her Masters in Vocal Performance at Mannes College of Music in New York. After winning the 2005 Liederkranz Competition, she joined the roster of New York City Opera and sang Mimi in La bohème there for two consecutive seasons in 2006 and 2007. This album marks her recording debut.

A native of Kyiv, the pianist Tatyana Kebuladze studied with Tamia Kozlova, and graduated from the Glière State Music College in her home town, the alma mater of Vladimir Horowitz. Arriving in America in 1998, she continued her studies, earning a Master of Music degree at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where she now serves on the piano faculty.