For his second album on Piano Classics, Alexander Gavrylyuk has chosen a visual and imaginative programme: the unusual but logical pairing of two romantic cycles, Mussorgsky’s Pictures and Schumann’s Kinderszenen. In Mussorgsky, Gavrylyuk unleashes his immense physical and creative powers to evoke the Russian scenes with which painter Hartmann inspired the composer: from the innocent children’s play, the mysterious old castle, the quarrelling market vendors to the grotesque gnomus, the netherworld of the Catacombae, the menacing evil of Baba Yaga to the monumental Great Gate of Kiev. In Schumann’s Kinderszenen Gavrylyuk draws with a fine pencil the scenes from a child’s world, tender, innocent, joyful, the disc suitably closing with the moving Der Dichter Spricht.

Alexander Gavrylyuk at 28 has already built an impressive international career, having played with New York Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (3 seasons in a row). His first CD on Piano Classics (Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Scriabin, PCL0037) received rave reviews, a.o. CHOC and Pianiste Maestro in France, and 5 star reviews in FonoForum, Gramophone and Fanfare.