Natalia Andreeva is a Russian pianist who is currently Lecturer in Piano at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her 2015 recording of the music of Galina Ustvolskaya was very well received, and like that album, this new recording of better-known classical and Romantic works is the result of many years of study, developing her own mental picture of these masterpieces and of what the composers were trying to communicate. Though there is a Beethoven sonata here, probably the best known work is Prokofiev’s Second; with the Scriabin sonata the three paint different aspects of the Romantic movement from beginning to near its ‘end’ and the disc is completed with a bonus work: Debussy’s Estampes, which shows yet another type of romanticism, this time the impressionist form. This is one of two linked releases, the other featuring Preludes and Fugues for the piano, from Bach, Liszt, Franck and Shostakovich (bonus tracks from Rachmaninoff) and they provide two fine recital-style programs of essential classics.
