VSEVOLOD ZADERATSKY (1891-1953): 24 Preludes and Fugues.

Description: One of the most persecuted of Soviet composers (he was in a White Russian military formation during the Russian Civil War, he was disenfranchised and regularly arrested and harassed), Zaderatsky produced this miraculous set while in a Siberian gulag during the period 1937-39. Using any available scrap of paper (the booklet cover reproduces one of the composed-on telegraph blanks which were a primary source for him), he somehow created a kaleidoscopic variety of preludes and fugues reflecting all the music he had ever heard in his life, from Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov through Scriabin to Prokofiev and Shostakovich (whose Preludes  Zaderatsky would have known but whose own set of 24 preludes and fugues came more than a decade later), now thundering, now whispering, now sarcastic, now intimate and confessional. This music was only published in 2012 and first performed in 2014. 2 CDs. Lukas Geniušas, Andrei Gugnin, Nikita Mndoyants, Ksenia Bashmet, Yury Favorin, Andrei Yaroshinsky (piano).