Album

Jan Schulmeister

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Scriabin: Five Preludes, Op. 16 - Rachmaninoff: Six moments musicaux, Op. 16

Catalogue Number: SU 4365-2
Published: 22nd August 2025
First release: SUPRAPHON 2025
Genre: Chamber Music
Format: 1 CD
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881) – Pictures at an Exhibition. Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) – 5 Preludes, Op. 16, Etude in C sharp minor, Op. 2, No. 1. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) – Six moments musicaux, Op. 16

Jan Schulmeister – piano

So far, the career of the Czech pianist Jan Schulmeister has been distinguished by victories at dozens of international competitions (including the 2019 César Franck Piano Competition in Belgium, the 2021 North International Music Competition in Sweden, and the 2022 Manhattan International Competition in the USA), to which he added Third Prize at the prestigious Cliburn Junior Competition (Dallas, USA) in 2023 at 17 years of age. For his Supraphon debut, he has chosen works of the late 19th century by Russian composers, music that is firmly grounded in the national tradition but that often seeks out and remains open to stimuli from the surrounding world. The oldest of them, Mussorgsky, was a loner without any depth of academic training, but he greatly advanced the boundaries of musical expression. In Pictures at an Exhibition, he accompanies listeners at an imaginary exhibition of paintings by his late friend, the painter and architect Viktor Hartmann. Rachmaninoff wrote his lovely cycle of piano pieces Moments musicaux under time pressure while facing a profound existential and creative crisis. His classmate Scriabin, no less brilliant a pianist, chose the path of a visionary and an experimenter as a composer, as we can hear from an early opus he wrote for piano (at age 16), the Etude in C sharp minor, Op. 2, No. 1. His later Five Preludes, Op. 16 (1895) reflect the omnipresent Impressionism of Paris at the end of the century. In this repertoire, Jan Schulmeister can demonstrate all of his qualities – virtuosic technique and depth of musical feeling.

The virtuosic Supraphon debut of Jan Schulmeister
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition
1. Promenade 01:25
2. Gnomus 03:02
3. Promenade II 01:00
4. Il vecchio castello 05:28
5. Promenade III 00:26
6. Tuileries 01:05
7. Bydlo 03:04
8. Promenade IV 00:55
9. Ballet of the Chicken in their Shells 01:12
10. Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle 02:37
11. Promenade V 01:24
12. Limoges, le marché – La grande nouvelle 01:21
13. Catacombae - Sepulchrum romanum 02:04
14. Cum mortuis in lingua mortua 02:01
15. The Hut on Fowls´ Legs - Baba Yaga 03:26
16. The Great Gate of Kiev 05:33
Alexander Nikolayevitch Scriabin
Five Preludes, Op. 16
17. No. 1 in B major. Andante 02:52
18. No. 2 in G sharp minor. Allegro 01:30
19. No. 3 in G flat major. Andante cantabile 02:26
20. No. 4 in E flat minor. Lento 01:21
21. No. 5 in F sharp major. Allegretto 00:38
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff
Six moments musicaux
22. No. 1 in B flat minor. Andantino 08:01
23. No. 2 in E flat minor. Alegretto 03:24
24. No. 3 in B minor. Andante cantabile 05:07
25. No. 4 in E minor. Presto 03:13
26. No. 5 in D flat major. Adagio sostenuto 04:24
27. No. 6 in C major. Maestoso 04:50
Alexander Nikolayevitch Scriabin
28. Etude in C sharp minor, Op. 2 No. 1 02:47