Late Soviet piano music

Piano music composed in the Soviet Union and Russia from approximately 1960-1991, encompassing the final decades of the Soviet cultural system and the period of its collapse. Key composers include Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Denisov, and Silvestrov, all of whom operated in complex tension with official Soviet cultural policy. Their piano works range from strictly controlled serial techniques (which were politically suspicious) to polystylism and spiritual expression (which were even more so). The period produced some of the most distinctive and under-performed piano music of the 20th century.

Late Soviet piano music is often performed too cautiously, as though the extreme dynamics and abrupt juxtapositions were exaggerations. They are not: the emotional and political context of this music demands that its extremes be taken at full value. Play the silences, the ppp passages, and the moments of apparent tonality with the same commitment as the fortissimo outbursts.