Since Erkki Melartin has earned much praise on this forum I've got to mention this new 2CD set from Crystal covering the composer's works for piano. I don't know the soloist Maria Lettberg and I've never heard any of these piano pieces, but this is certainly a release that got my attention. To be released 1st of March (jpc, that is).
http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Erkki-Melartin-Das-Klavierwerk/hnum/1146039 (http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Erkki-Melartin-Das-Klavierwerk/hnum/1146039)
Morten
Good news, and thanks for the heads up! I'm very fond of Melartin's piano music, including Nolo me tangere, the preludes op.85, and the sonata op. 111 (his first and also, unfortunately, last). Melartin wrote a great deal of keyboard music, much of it intended for amateurs but only rarely sounding like salon music. The preludes are an example of his amateur music; the sonata is a more challenging score. Both are included in Maria Lettberg's selection.
Melartin is sometimes referred to as a cosmopolitan composer, and it is true that in his keyboard works one hears a style rooted in Finnish folk song being integrated with modern or even avant garde trends. Startling passages and sections are strewn throughout many of his keyboard works. Pieces that sound less surprising still come across as personal, often beautiful -- sometimes deeply beautiful on subsequent playing -- but usually with a sense of looming drama.
Melartin's later piano music mixes aesthetic beauty and intellectuality in a way that reminds me of Debussy's later, slightly ascetic aesthetic (Etudes, En blanc et noir, etc). Not that Melartin _sounds_ like late Debussy, to be sure, but I think a similar interpretive approach conveys what he's trying to do. I look forward to hearing how Ms Lettberg plays this music.
Hmmm, sounds interesting. I love the symphonies and the violin concerto (and whatever else in on that Ondine disc....Sleeping Beauty?) and if his piano music is similar to Debussy's in that sense...
There's a goodly amount of it in score on IMSLP now, I think, fwiw, while one awaits hearing the recording...
The jpc-link has been updated with excerpts, so now we have the chance to get more familiar with the music.
Morten