CD 1 & CD 2:
24 Preludes & Fugues

CD 3:
Homeland (1946), Front

CD 4:
24 Preludes

CD 5:
Sonatas

When some of Vsevolod Zaderatsky’s compositions were performed in a concert before the Academic Council of Moscow Conservatory in 2004, its members unanimously concurred that the works were written by one of the most significant Russian composers of his time. Reference was made to the “lost classics of the 20th century”. The twentieth century brought forth many examples of the suppression of works by certain composers and even of whole categories of music. The numerous composers labelled as “degenerate” in Nazi Germany are fine examples. Since the late 1980s there has been a revival of works by Jewish composers murdered in the Holocaust; such composers include Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Erwin Schulhoff, Józef Koffler and Gideon Klein. Only after the break-up of the Soviet Union were Russian avant-garde works of the 1910s and1920s by Arthur Lourié, Alexander Mosolov, Sergei Protopopov, Nikolai Roslavets, Leonid Polovinkin and Gavriil Popov rediscovered. Barely known until just a few years ago, the works of Mieczyslaw Weinberg have received much attention recently. It is also worth noting the discovery of the New Jewish School (comprising such composers as Alexander Krein, Mikhail Gnesin, Lazare Saminsky, Alexander Veprik, Joachim Stutschewsky and Juliusz Wolfsohn), the decline of which in the late 1930s was caused by Stalinism and Nazism in equal measure. A series of first-ever CD recordings of music by the New Jewish School has been released by Hänssler Classics in recent years.