Often described as a favourite pupil of Shostakovich, Boris Tishchenko studied composition with the master between 1962 and 1965. The influence of Shostakovich is discernible in much of Tishchenko’s music, but the younger composer was also interested in the music of non-European countries, such as India, China and Japan, as well as in Russian folklore.

Tishchenko was a prolific composer, with an output that covered many genres, including a great deal of orchestral music. Throughout his career, however, runs the thread of his eleven piano sonatas: the first sonata is his Op.3, and the final one became his last completed score. Most of the sonatas are extensive works, imagined on an almost symphonic scale.

With a duration of 40 minutes, the Seventh Sonata, Op.85 (1982), is the longest of them all. It is also the most unusual, being a sonata ‘for piano with bells’. On this recording the pianist is joined by a percussionist playing respectively large bells, tubular bells and glockenspiel in the three movements of the sonata.

The Eighth Sonata, Op.99 (1986), despite being a three-movement work also, could not be more different - testimony to the stylistic breadth of the composer.

Joined by Jean-Claude Gengembre in Sonata no.7, the French pianist Nicolas Stavy makes his first appearance on BIS in these demanding and valuable scores. His recording also serves as a useful and welcome reminder of the many fine composers that remained in the Soviet Union, when colleagues such as Sofia Gubaidulina or Alfred Schnittke emigrated to the West.