Mozart – Grieg. Martynov

It is not everyone who knows that in his time Edvard Grieg composed parts for a second piano for several of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s keyboard sonatas. The result produced is staggering: Works known and familiar since childhood to every pianist and audiences alike sound completely new and unexpectedly fresh.
These congenial transcriptions which Polina Osetinskaya and Alexei Goribol have taken to compile a separate programme are, unfortunately, performed extremely rarely on the concert stage today. The last time the Mozart-Grieg four sonatas and the Fantasie in C Minor were performed in Moscow was a quarter of a century ago – by Sviatoslav Richter and Elisabeth Leonskaja.
As a special addition to this programme, Moscow composer Vladimir Martynov wrote his work for two pianos Quasi una fantasia, which was premiered in the Russian capital at the Chamber Hall of the House of Music on 26 April 2011.