Vavilov G. Etudes-pictures for piano

Gennady Vavilov's piano music is truly considered to be the special page in his creative work: 16 sonatas, 14 piano suites, among them - the ones, based on the Karelian and the Finnish folk-lore — “Piirilejkki”, “Runes”, “Native Strains”, “Iojkhu”, cycles of piano pieces, as large-scale as “The Northern Album”, “The Way to the Sun”, “Etudes-pictures”, novelles, more than one hundred programme-miniatures. All these compositions did not only enrich the world composition palette of the second half of the 20th century, not very abounding in piano creations. They also seemed to determine the perspectives of this genre development in the 21 century. 

Etudes-pictures by Guennady Vavilov are five large-scaled compositions, united by their common creative idea. The cycle exhibits the diversity of technique problems serving for various voluminous imaginative spheres. However, one may notice the unity inside the dramaturgic structure, although every single piece is supposed to be performed separately from the others due to completeness and integrity, peculiar to them. Resorting to the genre of Etude is not quite a frequent phenomenon in the composition creation. Simultaneously such masterpieces as the etudes by Chopin, Liszt, Skryabin, Rakhmaninov were born during the piano etude history of development. Moreover, exactly Etudes appeared, coinciding somehow with the most tense landmarks of society's life, periods of cataclysms and crises, turns of epochs and mentalities. Composers used to put utmostly meaningful idea to Etudes, thus moving away from pure virtuosity and technological problems. Thus F. Liszt, designating his Etudes as “Etudes d'execution transcendante” (Etudes of Transcendental Execution) implicited, but not the highest level of technical difficulties. According to Ya. Milshtein's assertion Liszt's main objective was “the skill to perform music composition in all its brilliance and freshness, the capability of lofty contemplation at the piano, making the technique assist the poetical idea, i. e. the highest executional skill”. Etudes-pictures op. 39 by Rakhmaninov are composed with masterly dashing might. The great Russian author has endowed them with the vague time breath and special imaginative features, peculiar to him. It wasn't just occasionally, when the Italian composer Respighi decided to orchestrate five of the Etudes-pictures, recognizing inexhaustible colourful and imaginative depths.