This is, however, what baffled audiences, particularly in the West after he fled the Soviet Union within the Twenties, and held him back from public acceptance on a scale matching that of his pal, Rachmaninov, whose music was much more conventionally melodic. The more I hear his music, in reality, the more I really feel that he combined the harmonic language of mid-period Scriabin with a melodic line nearer to Mussorgsky. Listen, for instance, to his Vocalise suite; it’s totally fascinating, musically quite complicated for late Romantic music, however not in the same category as Rachmaninov’s much more memorable Vocalise which grew to become an immediate “hit” within the classical world. The piano half, as usual for Medtner, may be very complex, right here together with some rising chromatic passages within the center that would by no means have occurred to Rachmaninov…and once again here, Levental’s delicate singing is completely …
