Medtner - Sonata Op. 25 No. 2 Night Wind (Ponochevny, Tozer)

The most collossal sonata by Medtner. Misleadingly appearing from its numbering to be a mere appendage to the modestly scaled Sonata-Skazka, Medtner’s Sonata in E minor is in fact the composer’s most extended work in the genre, a monumental epic which taxes to the full the capacities of performer and listener alike and which some have claimed to be the greatest piano sonata of the twentieth century. It is headed by an epigraph from Tyutchev’s poem Silentium, in which the poet sees chaos as man’s natural inheritance: What are you wailing about, night wind, what are you bemoaning with such fury? What does your strange voice mean, now indistinct and plaintive, now loud? In a language intelligible to the heart you speak of torment past understanding, and you moan and at times stir up frenzied sounds in the heart! Oh, do not sing those fearful songs about primeval native Chaos! How avidly the world of the soul at night listens to its favourite story! It strains to burst out of the mortal brea