'Russian Piano Music Today: Teachers and Pupils' - this could be an apt title of the next, seventh, volume of the Anthology of 20th Century Russian Piano Music realized by Firma Melodiya jointly with the Tikhon Khrennikov Foundation and the National Foundation of Rightholders Support. The featured compositions reflect the spectrum of piano music in Russia for the last 20 years.

Tolib Shahidi’s works are arguably the brightest ones on the seventh disc. A son of the founder of Tajik professional music, Ziyodullo Shahidi, and a graduate of Aram Khachaturian’s class at the Moscow Conservatory, Tolib Shahidi has successfully synthesized national cultural features of Tajikistan with the achievements of Russian and European music. His works are now performed in many countries of the world.

Kirill Volkov, Tatiana Chudova and Yuri Vorontsov are representatives of the academic tradition of Russian music. Pupils of the outstanding masters Aram Khachaturian, Tikhon Khrennikov and Evgeny Golubev, they also combine their creative and teaching careers. While Vorontsov’s piece Sirius evokes cosmic associations, the sonatas by Chudova and Volkov are inspired with nature of Russian north.

Music of the new generation of composers is represented with the works by Alexei Sysoyev and Alexei Sergunin. Sysoyev, who began his career as a jazz musician, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory under Tatiana Chudova. Sergunin is also a Moscow Conservatory graduate, who studied piano under Ksenia Knorre and composition under Alexander Tchaikovsky. Today, both of the young musicians take part in the most topical events of Russian music life.

Contemporary piano music is performed by young pianists - worthy representatives of the Russian performing school. Nikita Mndoyants, Yuri Favorin and Fyodor Amirov are also professional composers who give preference to contemporary music in their programmes.