This is a reissue of a Marco Polo disc from 1993‚ and it’s good to have it available at Naxos’s cheaper price. César Cui‚ whose often poisoned pen castigated many a superior composer (the young Rachmaninov suffered famously after the disastrous première of his First Symphony‚ and Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky were particularly mauled)‚ is the least well­known of The Five‚ chiefly because‚ as Richard Anthony Leonard put it long ago (in his History of Russian Music; Jarrolds: 1956‚ quoted in Ate° Orga’s informative notes)‚ ‘he was the weakest member…and by so large a margin that we wonder at the respect and even deference which he commanded from the group…the poorest composer…the loudest talker’. The Preludes‚ Op 64 date from 1903‚ yet inhabit a far more backward­looking‚ romantically anonymous canvas than‚ say‚ Rachmaninov’s contemporaneous Op 23 Preludes‚ middle­period Scriabin‚ or even early Medtner. In fact‚ ironically‚ the closest Russian influences are Tchaikovsky (his numerous piano miniatures)‚ Rubinstein‚ and occasionally Mussorgsky (the opening C major Prelude is a close relation of the ‘Promenade’ from Pictures at an Exhibition). Schumann and Mendelssohn are never far away either. But within Cui’s narrow confines‚ the music is appealing in its lyrical charm‚ especially in some of the delightful dreamier pieces in Schumann’s Eusebian mode. Jeffrey Biegel‚ who studied with Adele Marcus at Juilliard‚ plays with considerable aplomb‚ and although he can be rather monolithic in the bigger­boned‚ etude­like pieces‚ his attractive tonal variety and musical shape in the more introspective numbers are particularly successful. The recorded sound is quite reverberant‚ the instrument’s tuning not always perfect.