Yuri Muravlev plays Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor
Part I
Grieg, Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
1. Allegro molto moderato (beginning)
Recording 1950, cond. Eliasberg
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By Stanisław Dybowski
Yuri Muravlev -- 4th Prize winner, 4th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (1949). Yuri Muravlev started taking piano lessons at the children's music school at the Leningrad Conservatoire with Professor Linde. He graduated from this school in 1941, moving to Moscow where he enrolled for the Conservatoire in Henry Neuhaus' class.
In 1945, Yuri Muravlev was awarded 3rd Prize (after Viktor Merzhanov and Sviatoslav Richter) at the All-Soviet Music Performance Competition in Moscow. The year 1949 was marked by two international successes for the pianist: he took 2nd prize at the Youth and Students Festival in Budapest and 4th prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.
Muravlev, despite possessing all the necessary attributes for a successful career such as musicality and great technique, retreated from the Moscow music scene due to his personal traits (excessive modesty, melancholy). He appeared so sporadically that few listeners could appreciate what a subtle and refined performer he was. Muravlev's favourite composers were Chopin and Grieg, both romantic, emotional, at times nostalgic, with a highly personal musical expression. Muravlev's playing is likewise personal, intimate and devoid of great dramatic tensions and dynamic contrasts. Even in pieces by Beethoven, Liszt or Rachmaninov, where the music displays emotional tension, Muravlev softens the extremes. He certainly is no virtuoso or titan of the keyboard; much more a 'poet of the piano'.