We'll admit that the title "Cui Transcriptions" could create confusion: are these works of Cui's transcribed for piano, or works transcribed by Cui? The answer's simple: both! Or at least for the Orchestral Suite Op. 38 from 1887, which the composer later re-worked as a version for four-handed piano. For the other two works here, the answer is: of Cui's. The two series of Miniatures, respectively for piano solo (Twelve Miniatures Op. 20, 1882) and for violin and piano (Seven Miniatures Op. 39, 1886), were transcribed for four-handed piano in the 1890s by Alexandre Schaefer and Gyorgy Dütsch – clearly a bit of sleight of hand by an editor who knew that in their new version, these delightful works would easily find a huge audience among the Russian aristocracy. Cui, while not averse to a fair dose of modernism in music, wasn't an avant-gardist himself. Another odd thing, for someone who defended Russification to the hilt – while, for example, he hated Rachmaninov and wasn't too fond of Tchaikovsky, whom he probably thought too "western" – he doesn't develop very many Russianisms in these miniatures: "Expansion naïve", "Aveu tendre", "Arabesque", "Canzonetta" or "Romanzetta", here we are in the very cosmopolitan world of francophone, italophile, germanophile Russia... And that sold scores. Maria Ivanova & Alexander Zagarinsky bring joy and a tender touch to these adorable melodic strands. © SM/Qobuz