The Russian composer Herman Galynin (1922–66) studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Shostakovich and Myaskovsky, producing a flow of brilliant compositions while still a student. They fuse influences from his teachers – Shostakovich’s wit and irony and Myaskovsky’s lyrical introspection – with Prokofiev’s rhythmic energy to produce a language very much his own. Although he was dogged by ill fortune (he was an orphan) and ill health, Galynin’s music expresses a defiant will to live with verve and humour. Herman Hermanovich Galynin (1922–66) met with his share of bad fortune, not least crippling illness and the hostile political climate of the Stalin regime. Galynin was born on 30 March 1922 in the industrial city of Tula, around 100 miles south of Moscow.

Orphaned at a young age, after surviving on his own for some time he was fostered in the orphanage at Tula only 14 years old, where his musical talents emerged. His musical gifts were held in the highest esteem by Dmitri Shostakovich and Nikolai Myaskovsky, his teachers at the Moscow Conservatory. Many of Galynin’s freshest works date from his student years at the Conservatory. Considered to be one of the casualties Stalin’s post-war cultural purges, Galynin was deeply affected by the dismissal of Shostakovich for harbouring ‘formalist’ tendencies. As a former pupil of Shostakovich, he was reassigned to a different teacher and asked to compose works to demonstrate his ‘re-education’ after having been ‘contaminated’ by Shostakovich. What remains most compelling about Galynin’s music is the highly personal quality of his lyricism, his ability to expand his material in fresh and fertile directions and a phenomenal rhythmic verve. All this is in evidence in his music for solo piano, of which this recording offers the first instalment of a comprehensive survey.