Samuil Feinberg was a Russian pianist and composer, one of the major Soviet keyboard artists of the twentieth century. He was especially admired for Bach, Beethoven, Scriabin and Russian repertory.

In the Pristine catalogue he appears in Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, recorded between 1958 and 1961.

Feinberg’s playing combines intellectual intensity, tonal imagination and a profoundly personal approach to polyphony. His Bach is not polite wallpaper; it thinks, sings and smoulders.

His page is essential. Feinberg gives the piano shelf a Russian Bach of granite, candlelight and inward fire.