Profound Commitment Jenny Lin recovers buried historical treasure - appreciated by GORDON RUMSON '... Jenny Lin achieves wonderful results.'

Jenny Lin is an outstanding and fascinating pianist. With an excellent technique, a sensitive ear, a sure sense of style and high musicianship, whatever she turns her attention to is sure to be a successful musical venture. In this CD, devoted to the obscure avant-garde music of Soviet Russia's early days of social, political and cultural experimentation, Jenny Lin achieves wonderful results.

Some of the composers are well known -- Liadov, Glière and Scriabin -- but others are not. With the well known there is at least some tradition of style and interpretation. But what is one to make of the music of Stanchinsky, Lourié or Roslavetz? To find the key to the sound world of these composers is a difficult task. Here too, Jenny Lin succeeds.

The repertoire is selected from that amazing era of experimentalism that flourished in the late Czarist age and lasted a little into the Soviet era. Larry Sitsky, in his superb book The Repressed Russian Avant-Garde 1900-1929, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1993) has chronicled the period and discussed the music in great detail. It comes as no surprise that the very fine liner notes draw on Sitsky's work. These composers were extremely well trained at the great Russian conservatories and they had the highest level of musical cultivation. There is a vast body of music to be heard.

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