Kirill Kozlovski (piano)

Shaporin: Romance Without Words
Shaporin: Piano Sonata No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 5
Shaporin: Pieces (2) from a Piano Suite
Shaporin: Morceaux (2) for Piano
Shaporin: Ballad in G minor for Piano, Op. 28
Shaporin: Matelot
Shaporin: Fugue in F sharp minor
Shaporin: Oriental Dance
Shaporin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in F sharp minor, Op. 7

With its roots in the tradition of Borodin and Mussorgsky, the music of the Ukrainian-born Soviet composer Yuri Shaporin (1887–1966) sits between the late Romanticism of Skryabin and the harder edges of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, blending a mastery of counterpoint with an acute sense of Russian keyboard colour. In Shaporin’s piano music his fondness for the epic – expressed in two large-scale sonatas and a mighty passacaglia – is contrasted with a number of gentle, almost whimsical miniatures.