As gifted a pianist as Prokofiev, and a composer whom Rachmaninoff rated more highly than himself, Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) has long been neglected, a victim both of circumstances (the Russian Revolution, emigration, war) and of his difficulty in adapting to 1920s Berlin and 1930s Paris, two hotbeds of a modernity that was fundamentally alien to him. For this CD gives us a chance to discover the last of the great Romantics, a worthy heir to Chopin and Brahms who celebrated the great poets, both Russian (Pushkin, Tyuchev, Lermontov) and German (Goethe and Heine), faithful to the double culture of his origins. Seventeen of his finest songs are accompanied here by eight Skazki, literally ‘tales’ for piano, or, if you prefer, poems without words.