Nicolai Karlovich Medtner, Russian composer and pianist comes from a cultured and wealthy family; he graduated with highest honors in piano performance from the Moscow Conservatory. Medtner stayed in Russia through the Civil War, but in 1921 left for exile. He found a second home in England. 

Medtner's music is not easy to grasp on first hearing, and it fails utterly to beg for attention. If one is willing to listen closely and carefully, though, the dense textures resolve into a play of voices that involve the listener at a visceral as well as an intellectual level, and one begins to grasp Medtner's strong and individual sense of form. The numerous short pieces turn out to have an extraordinary emotional range. Medtner's aesthetic is in fact very modern in its preference for compression and linear eloquence. It is also the last significant contribution to the Romantic piano repertoire.