Tourism-friendly Swiss romance

It is not a renowned Swiss performer, but the little-known pianist Berkant Nuriev, born in Bulgaria with Turkish roots, who is responsible for some of the most original recent repertoire enrichments. He has lived in Bern for a quarter of a century, where he trained as a soloist, chamber musician and song accompanist at the University of the Arts under Rada Petkova, Erika Radermacher and Bruno Canino. His wondrously entertaining CD Tour romantique de Suisse leads through the tourist Switzerland of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Lots of out-of-print piano pieces, which Nuriev has tracked down in archives and libraries with an irrepressible thirst for discovery, evoke memories of popular travel destinations between Lake Constance (Wilhelm Baumgartner: At Lake ConstanceRomance) and Lake Geneva (Johannes Wolfensperger: On Lake Genevapolka). In his first recordings, the pianist brings all these tourist sites to our ears in their musical reflections.

The absence of the concert etude, for example At the Giessbach by Joachim Raff or suitable pieces by Johann Carl Eschmann, a pupil of Mendelssohn's from Winterthur, the pianist makes up for this with long-forgotten travel pictures by a single foreigner. The Austrian Alfred Jaëll invites the listener to take a long break with particularly sophisticated impressions from Interlaken, Zurich and the Lauterbrunnen Valley (Pèlerinage en Suisse).

The journey continues with amiable miniatures by Helvetian colleagues Bernhard Bogler (Polka On the banks of the Limmat), Jacques Ehrhart (Valses luganaises) and the only Chopin pupil from Switzerland, Charles Samuel Bovy-Lysberg (Fantaisie sur des Airs Suisses). The shortest and at the same time most humorous souvenir, the piece lasting just under a minute Arosa ice rinkwas written by Heinrich Pestalozzi, who worked as a pastor in this Graubünden parish.

Berkant Nuriev masters the delicate balancing act between art and kitsch with bravura and an audible wink in the twelve rarities, in which nourishing virtuoso fodder alternates with easily digestible salon music.