First recordings of Romantic-era piano miniatures by an overlooked figure in the ‘New Russian School’ of composers known as ‘The Mighty Handful’.

‘Irretrievably forgotten’ was the verdict of the musicologist Richard Taruskin on the music of César Cui. He would be deprecated in our time as a dilettante composer, being a man of parts who made his career in the Russian military, firstly as an officer and then as an expert on fortifications. In that capacity Cui became a professor in Moscow while also writing prolifically about music: he was known as a stern critic, and he played an instrumental role in promoting a new, distinctively Russian school of music which built on the nationalist operas of Glinka and Mussorgsky.

In that context, Cui’s own music sounds at odds with his philosophy, cultivating as it does a central-European poetic style indebted to the examples of Chopin and Schumann. Marco Rapetti is the first-ever pianist to record his complete piano output, and this first volume covers the years 1877 to 1888, from the Trois Morceaux, op.8, to the Trois Mouvements de valse, op.41. Delightful sets of miniatures include mazurkas and serenades no less charming for their brevity. Most substantial of the collections featured here are the Suite, op.21, dedicated to Franz Liszt, and a suite of nine ‘pièces caracteristiques’, op.40, dedicated to the count and countess de Mercy-Argenteau; the countess was a tireless promoter of Cui’s music in western Europe.

Marco Rapetti has made a speciality of recording neglected Russian piano music, including sets on Brilliant Classics dedicated to the work of Alexander Borodin and Anatoly Lyadov. In welcoming his set of Debussy’s two-piano works, where he was partnered by Massimillano Damerini, the Fanfare magazine reviewer noted that ‘Damerini and Rapetti perform with perfect unanimity and a verve and élan that bring out all the vividness of the orchestral works.’