Arensky (1861-1906) is best remembered today for just a handful of works – including the First Piano Trio and the First Suite for two pianos – and for being professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Moscow Conservatory, where his pupils included Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Gliere and Gretchaninov. As a teacher he was important, and he was an influential figure in the growth of musical culture in Moscow during the 1880s; as a composer he was conventional, heavily influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov and then Tchaikovsky. His piano miniatures are among his best works, their easygoing charm and lyrical, slightly sentimental, melodic style suiting the medium. Not all the music is melodically distinguished, and some pieces rely too heavily on simple thematic cells. There are, however, plenty of nice turns of phrase and colourful harmonic twists, and this disc makes pleasant, if not always wholly engaging, listening.
The performances in many respects reflect the music. Stephen Coombs has shown his credentials in earlier discs from Hyperion’s Russian Piano Portrait series: he is thoroughly musical, produces an attractive tone, and has a feeling for this type of salon-type miniature. The ‘Impromptu’, Op. 25 No. 1 illustrates the best of his playing, capturing the contemplative, reflective mood with a flowing rather than overly projected line. The brooding ‘Prelude’ and the nostalgic ‘Romance’, both from Op. 53, are also impressive, but in the more upbeat, technically demanding works Coombs sometimes seems too laid back. In the ‘Scherzo’ from Op. 53, for example, his allegro is pedestrian, reading four quavers a bar into the 2/4 metre, before applying a doppio movimento (unmarked in my score) to the middle section. In the first of the Op. 41 Etudes, too, Coombs is perfectly fluent but unresponsive to Arensky’s precise dynamic markings – a requested range from pp to fff, a wealth of small crescendos and diminuendos, and left- and right-hand independence and contrast, are all compressed into a narrow mezzo-forte level. And while the ‘Etude’ from Op. 36 has a seamless fluidity, others (especially Op. 41 Nos. 2 and 3) lack charm and imaginative spirit, and the necessary fleetness.
In short, the inwardly reflective pieces suit Coombs’s quiet manner well, but the more dramatic works are rather muted in characterization. The recorded sound is, unusually for Hyperion, slightly hard and unyielding.'