Description

Little Cadenzas, Canons and Preludes for Pianoforte, an album of 36 piano miniatures in all keys of the circle of fifths and in church modes, as …well as two preludes by Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857–1929) that modulate “through all keys”, are presented here for the first time in print. Mandyczewski, who went down in music history as a Brahms friend, editor and archivist of the Vienna Musikverein, composed numerous vocal and piano works, including twelve Orthodox liturgies and two cycles of variations on themes by George Frideric Handel. The album, a birthday present from the composer to his twelve-year-old daughter Virginia, was written in the middle of the First World War and was not premiered publicly until a century later – after the manuscript was found in a Ukrainian library – at the Mandyczewski Festival in Chernivtsi (Ukraine) in 2017. Mandyczewski shows himself here as a master of the small form and counterpoint, but also as a demanding teacher – and so the pieces, once reserved for his daughter, will now be made accessible to a wider circle of young musicians to enjoy.