The sound of the Trpčeski recording is very good, offering clarity, detail, and solid, well-defined piano tone, with no ringing or blurring even in the loudest passages. This release will give much pleasure to admirers of fine pianism and is accordingly recommended.

One doesn’t necessarily have to know the plots or subtexts attached to these ‘Tales from Russia’ to appreciate their musical essence. It helps, of course, to have a good narrator like Simon Trpčeski, whose keyboard prowess vividly communicates such stories without words...In many ways the musical substance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade is embedded within its brilliant orchestration. Yet somehow the late 19th-century Belgian composer Paul Gilson’s solo piano version manages to lose nothing in translation.

[Scheherazade] Trpčeski’s performance is magnificent, his virtuosity seemingly effortless as he conjures up moments of fury and enchantment. The same holds for his accounts of Prokofiev’s Tales of an Old Grandmother – a sweetly down-home piece composed while the composer was in America in 1918 – and Musorgsky’s celebrated tone-poem St John’s Eve on Bald Mountain. Trpčeski’s pianism makes convivial magic out of all these pieces: other players should take their cue from him, and enshrine them in the repertory.