ABSTRACT
\nThe nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the rapid growth of musical\u00a0culture in Russia. This resulted in a large repertoire of piano music \u2014 ranging from\u00a0miniatures to virtuosic etudes and sonatas. Growing out of the nineteenth century\u00a0romantic tradition, and highly influenced by the social conditions of the time, Russian
\ncomposers developed a distinctive style which closely reflected their culture,\u00a0personalities and ideologies.<\/p>\n
There are several approaches to studying performance practice. One is to study\u00a0the interpretations of other pianists. While this does have many advantages, it has not\u00a0been adopted in this paper as it has one flaw: it still fails to capture the distinctive
\nlanguage of these composers. Rather, the paper will study the social and musical\u00a0influences on the composers, and, more importantly, their philosophies about pianism\u00a0and the purpose of music. This will be related to interpretative issues in the works.<\/p>\n
The repertoire has been divided into four areas. The paper commences with a\u00a0study of the miniature, which is valuable in finding the \u2018essence\u2019 of a composer\u2019s\u00a0musical language expressed on a small scale. Here, the \u2018elementary\u2019 considerations in\u00a0performance practice will be studied. The second chapter discusses etudes. This is
\nuseful in gaining an insight into composers\u2019 conception of technique, and how this\u00a0relates to performance practice. The third chapter deals with music that has extramusical\u00a0themes. This provides opportunity for a more detailed cultural and biographical\u00a0study of the composers. To represent the large-scale repertoire of Russian composers,\u00a0the sonata will be studied. Here, a detailed analysis of the composers\u2019 musical language\u00a0and its relationship to expression will be discussed.<\/p>\n