Music in Time of War, the new double-album from pianist Kirill Gerstein, places the music of Komitas, pioneer of ethnomusi- cology and founder of the Armenian national school of music, alongside that of Claude Debussy, a seminal composer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who held a deep admiration of Komitas’s music. Both composers were profoundly affected by the implosion of their worlds – Komitas by the Armenian Genocide, Debussy by the First World War – and their music reflects a close emotional alignment. Music in Time of War grew from Gerstein’s fascination with music’s power to reflect a narrative. The project will be released as a double CD album and will be accompanied by a hardcover book containing a series of illustrations and detailed essays in three languages commissioned by the pianist.

Kirill Gerstein’s decade long relationship with British composer and pianist Thomas Adès is reflected through this latest release from myrios classics. Recorded in the luxurious acoustics of the Symphony Hall in Boston, the three Mazurkas for solo piano feature alongside the world premiere recordings of Berceuse from The Exterminating Angel and the concert paraphrase on Powder Her Face for two pianos performed with the composer. Together with these works is In Seven Days for piano and orchestra which anticipated Adès’s recent piano concerto written, like Berceuse, especially for Kirill. The live performance was captured in the Seiji Ozawa Hall as part of the 2018 Tanglewood Music Festival, with Adès conducting the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.

Since 1894, Tchaikovsky‘s Piano Concerto No. 1 has been published and performed in a version containing numerous unauthorized editorial alterations that were added posthumously. This is the first recording using the new scholarly edition by the Tchaikovsky Archive and Museum in Moscow of the 1879 version of the Piano Concerto - the version that was approved and conducted by Tchaikovsky until his last public appearance in 1893.