Russia’s Silver Age, the last cultural flowering of Tsarism, was an astonishing period of creativity in all the arts, though, apart from all that was promoted by Diaghilev, much of it has faded into oblivion. How many people have heard the music of avant-gardists such as Nikolay Obukhov, Sergey Protopopov or Ivan Vïshnegradsky, featured on this record, or others perhaps destined for future volumes such as Arthur Lourié and Nikolay Roslavets? If, in a time of such diverse ideas they had a father figure it was Scriabin, who, together with the delicacy and subtle structures of Debussy, has clearly influenced Obukhov’s short pieces, collected and sensitively played by Thomas Günther. Vïshnegradsky made a name with a microtonal piano in his efforts to extend his style into “ultrachromaticism” (“isms” were all over the place in these heady years), but this is not heard here. The three pieces recorded are more forceful in style than Obukhov’s. The longest work is Protopopov’s Second Sonata, a powerful and complex, even violent work, whose intricacies Günther does well to elucidate. Study of it cannot have been straightforward.

Günther also provides very helpful notes on each work, augmenting a fine general essay on Russian Futurism by Mark Ziegler. The record is altogether excellently prepared, and is a fine introduction – which is what it will be for most people – to a world that has been too much set in the shadows by historical events and changes in fashion. It will richly reward curiosity, if that is also accompanied by a spot of determination.