Yulianna Avdeeva, piano. Music of Szpilman, Shostakovich, Weinberg, and Prokofiev

PENTATONE [PTC5187073]

BACKGROUND

Pianist Yulianna Avdeeva – who gained worldwide recognition at the 2010 Chopin Competition, where she won First Prize, makes her Pentatone debut with Resilience.

Comprising Władysław Szpilman’s Mazurek and Suite “The Life of the Machines,” along with sonatas by Shostakovich, Weinberg and Prokofiev, the program is dedicated to composers who survived times of great instability.

Szpilman, a Polish Jew who stayed alive through World War II thanks to the power of his music is widely known as the title hero of Roman Polanski’s award-winning film The Pianist. Avdeeva was inspired to make the recording after being offered the unique opportunity to play on Szpilman’s house piano, bringing her closer to the man she describes as “a person, whose never-ending belief in the good in humanity and strong will to live, no matter how hopeless the situation, guided him through one of the darkest times in history.”

Mieczysław Weinberg and Dmitry Shostakovich managed to survive the worst of the Stalin Era, while Sergei Prokofiev’s hot and cold relationship with the Soviets sets him in a different category from those others who truly suffrered during the worst days of the Soviet regime.

THE MUSIC

Władysław Szpilman (1911-2000) – Mazurek Suite The Life of the Machines; Machine at Rest; Toccatina

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) – Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 125

Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) – Piano Sonata No. 4 in B Minor, Op. 56

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) – Piano Sonata No. 8 in B-flat Major, Op. 84

Executive producer – Yulianna Avdeeva & Renaud Loranger

Recording producer- Bernhard Güttler

THE PERFORMANCE

Yulianna Avdeeva plays all five works featured in this album with unmannered elegance, allowing the music and the personal drama behind each of the compositions to be, in a self-effacing way, the main focus.

Rafael de Acha (c)2023