Nikolai Peyko (1916–95) is a major Russian composer who is completely unknown in the west. He studied with Myaskovsky at the Moscow Conservatoire, where he later became Shostakovich’s teaching assistant and then an important teacher in his own right. Peyko is another composer who wrote nine symphonies, and much other orchestral music besides, but he fell foul of the Soviet regime and was sidelined.

His piano music shares Shostakovich’s fondness for irony and Prokofiev’s for driving march-rhythms and playful good humour and, as with so many Russian composers, the sound of bells can often be heard.

This first CD of two in this complete recording of his piano music is the first time that any of this music has been recorded on a western label.

Dmitry Korostelyov, born in 1979 in Volgograd, graduated from the Moscow State Conservatoire in 2003 and 2005 completed his composition studies in the post-graduate course of the Moscow State Conservatoire. As a pianist, he has performed with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Volgograd Philharmonic Orchestra and Russkaya Conservatoria Chamber Capella. He appears as pianist and harpsichordist in many Russian cities, and in 2012 he performed in the Irish-Russian chamber-music festival ‘From John Field to the 21st Century’ in Moscow. His first recording for Toccata Classics was of song-cycles by Mieczysław Weinberg (TOCC0078).