Alexei Stanchinsky ‒ Piano Sonata No.1

Alexei Stanchinsky (1888 - 1914), Piano Sonata No.1 in F Major (1911 - 1912) Performed by Daniel Blumenthal 00:00 - No. 1 Allegro 07:30 - No. 2 Adagio 13:22 - No. 3 Presto One of the forgotten mulitiude of Russians in the years before the Great War and the Bolshevist Revolution, Stanchinsky was born in Vladimir Government. He studied piano with Josef Lhevinne and, at the Moscow Conservatoire, with the Sitoli disciple, Konstantin Igumnov. Composition lessons followed in 1904, when he was 16, with Zhilyayev and Taneyev. In 1908, on the death of his father, he fell victim to a chronic hereditary mental illness of schizophrenic nature, dementia praecox. Confined to a clinic for a year, suffering from hallucinations and religious mania interspersed by moments of lucidity, he was finally discharged, declared incurably insane. His tragic end came on October 1914. Found dead by a stream on the Crimean estate of one of his friends, how he died is not known -- though it is suspected to have been suicide. In fits of violent dislike, Stanchinsky destroyed (or tried to) many of his early pieces. Some were reconstructed by friends from memory. Other were saved from burning by Zhilyayev. His few later ones circulated in manuscript. By the time of his death, hailed by his teacher (as well as Prokofiev and Medtner, among others) as a genius of unusually brilliant gift, the most talented of his contemporaries in the opinion of many critics, he had become a cult figure. In 1916 Medtner inscribed his Three Pieces Op. 31 to Stanchinsky’s memory. Stanchinsky wrote five piano sonatas: the form mattered to him and, like Medtner, he cultivated it with Imagination and Intensity. The so-called First Sonata in F is a leaner, sparser statement, more obviously (neo) classically inclined than his previous Sonata in E-Flat Minor. Its slow movement, in B flat with expansively shifting tonal plains, is especially arresting for the rhythmic intricacy and invention of its melodic, ornamental and harmonic detail. RIP Hexameron: March 31, 2007 - February 29th, 2016