Rachmaninov: Music For 2 Pianos

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Cat No: 8557062

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Release Date: 09 January 2006

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313206223

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: RACHMANINOV

Description
Sergey Rachmaninov (1873-1943) Music for Two Pianos The Russian composer and pianist Sergey Rachmaninov was born in 1873, the son of aristocratic parents. His father's improvidence, however, led to a change in the fortunes of the family when increasing debts necessitated the sale of one estate after another, followed by removal to an apartment in St Petersburg. It was there that Rachmaninov, at the age of nine, entered the Conservatory on a scholarship. The subsequent separation of his parents and his own failure in general subject examinations brought about his move to Moscow, where he was accepted as a pupil of Nikolay Zverev, a pupil of John Field's pupil Dubucque and of Adolf von Henselt. Rachmaninov lodged in Zverev's house, where the necessary discipline was instilled, providing him with the basis of a subsequently formidable technique. In 1888 he entered the Conservatory as a pupil of his cousin Alexander Ziloti, a former pupil of Zverev and later of Liszt. Rachmaninov's other teachers at the Conservatory were Sergey Taneyev, a former pupil of Nikolay Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, with whom he studied counterpoint, and Rimsky-Korsakov's former pupil Anton Arensky, Rachmaninov's teacher for fugue, harmony and free composition. In Moscow, as time went on, he won considerable success, both as a performer and as a composer, after graduating in the piano class of the Conservatory in 1891 and in composition the following year.The Revolution of 1917 brought many changes. While some musicians remained in Russia, others chose temporary or permanent exile abroad. Rachmaninov took the latter course and thereafter found himself obliged to rely on his remarkable gifts as a pianist for the support of himself and his family, at the same time continuing his work as a conductor. Composition inevitably had to take second place and it was principally as a pianist, one of the greatest of his time, that he became known to audiences. Concert-tours in America proved lucrative and he established a publishing enterprise in Paris, where he lived for some time, before having a house built for himself and his family at Hertenstein, near Lucerne. In 1939 he left Europe, finally settling at Beverly Hills, where he died in 1943.The year 1893 brought the première of Rachmaninov's graduation opera Aleko and compositions that included The Rock, an orchestral fantasy inspired by a story of Chekhov, a series of songs and other pieces, and the Fantaisie-tableaux for two pianos, otherwise known as Suite No. 1, Op. 5. This last was dedicated to Tchaikovsky, whose death in the same year Rachmaninov commemorated in a Trio élégiaque.The suite consists of four movements, each headed by an illustrative quotation. The first, Barcarolle, draws something of its inspiration from lines taken from Lermontov's Gondola Song, suggesting the sound of waves in the evening against the gondola's oar and the transitory nature of love
Tracklisting