LDV90

FLORIAN NOACK 21 Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and most of all Mussorgsky speak a different idiom from his; Tchaikovsky’s piano works, with a few exceptions, have neither the dimensions nor the instrumental ambitions of Lyapunov’s; and Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov wrote almost nothing for the instrument. And Lyapunov is distinguished even fromBalakirev, whom he sometimes resembles so closely, by a form of gentleness and tenderness all his own, a characteristic fervour and fragility. ‘An imitator? If you wish. But a creator of beauty, which should never be negligible, whatever creed (aesthetic, philosophical or moral) one professes. Besides, is conscious imitation of this kind, as if absorbed day after day from the source, so fatally unacceptable nowadays when Balakirev is scarcely any better-known [than Lyapunov]?’ (Guy Sacre, La Musique de piano )