KEYBOARD CONVERSATIONS The Romanticism of the Russian Soul

Jeffrey Siegel performs Rachmaninoff, Medtner, and Scriabin beautifully. However, the value of these excerpts from these great Romantic works is not really in how moving they are but in their brevity and the focus of the selection. Siegel extracts sections that illustrate the principles of musical composition or emotion that he is explaining. The result is a pleasant education, one that even those of us who are musically dim can follow. What's more, Siegel delivers the historical and biographical asides with a personal glee, as if these composers were friends he loves across time. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 06/ JAN 07]