Nikolai Medtner: Sonata in E minor, op. 25 no. 2 "Night Wind"

From the first semifinal of the 2024 New Orleans International Piano Competition.

Medtner's monumental Night Wind sonata is a project I began in the fall of 2020. This is the most difficult piece I have ever learned in most respects; mastery of form and technique, memorization, and comprehension of the music itself have all been enormous challenges. I've enjoyed the process, and hope you enjoy the performance.

Medtner composed this sonata in 1910-11 and dedicated it to Sergei Rachmaninoff, with whom he was good friends. The piece is in one movement ("in an epic spirit," as Medtner writes) that can be split in two halves: the first half is in sonata form, with an introduction, exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda, and the second half adheres to a fantasy/theme and variations structure built off of the main theme presented in the introduction. Medtner likely structures the piece in this way to reflect Fyodor Tyutchev's "Night Wind" poem, which he includes in the prologue:

О чем ты воешь, ветр ночной?
О чем так сетуешь безумно?..
Что значит странный голос твой,
То глухо жалобный, то шумно?
Понятным сердцу языком
Твердишь о непонятной муке –
И роешь и взрываешь в нем
Порой неистовые звуки!..

О! страшных песен сих не пой!
Про древний хаос, про родимый
Как жадно мир души ночной
Внимает повести любимой!
Из смертной рвется он груди,
Он с беспредельным жаждет слиться!..
О! бурь заснувших не буди –
Под ними хаос шевелится!..

Translation:

Why moan, why wail you, wind of night,
With such despair, such frenzied madness?
Why is your voice now full of might,
Now piteous and tinged with sadness?
In tongue known to the heart, of pain
Unknown to it for ever chanting,
At times within it well-nigh frantic
Sounds you awaken and insane.

Sing not, O wind, your fearful song
Of chaos, for the hungry spirit,
Into night's world of shadows flung,
Exults in it and strains to hear it.
The bounds of mortal flesh 'twould fly
And merge with boundless ocean sweeping.
Take heed! Let slumbering tempests lie:
Beneath them chaos stirs unsleeping.