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Sonata No. 1 by P. Khvostchinsky
By Julian Dyer

These rolls have been recut by Tom Jansen, and indeed these are what
you hear in Max Lakeman's video on YouTube.  Probably the only way to
get them!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lpfY8w-CA
Attachment thumbnail In Charles Davis Smith's Welte catalog he describes how rolls numbered from 1937 to 2171 were recorded in Russia, the recording device first being transported to Moscow and then on to St. Petersburg. So this does agree with the idea that the Khvostchinsky rolls were recorded in St. Petersburg. It is more than likely the material was created for sale at Welte's Russian dealers, and most of these rolls seem to be quite scarce in western collections. Smith could not locate details for many of the issues. This is a pity because a lot of it is very interesting material from forgotten pianists. Russian transliterations vary by the target language and age which makes searches rather difficult. I think modern usage would identify the composer/pianist as Pyotr Abramovich Khvoshchinsky. There is a page about the composer at http://traditio.wiki/ which describes him as a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, later a soldier imprisoned after the Revolution who died of typhus in prison in 1920. Various others of his pieces were also published by P. Jurgenson and can be found online at the Rochester library page identified earlier. The Russian page uses Cyrillic script so the link is rather long: https://traditio.wiki/%D0%9F%D1%91%D1%82%D1%80_%D0%90%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%A5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%89%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9 Khvoshchinsky was described as a "Skryabinist" in "Russians on Russian Music: An Anthology 1880-1917" (ed. Stuart Campbell, Cambridge 2003), where the author couldn't find out more about him. And he is one of the many names in the Ira Gershwin lyric, "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)," well known in Danny Kaye's recording. Julian Dyer Wokingham, Berkshire, UK

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Key Words in Subject:  1, Khvostchinsky, No, P, Sonata