Rachmaninoff Alexander Sveshnikov

Under the title My Rachmaninoff, Alexander Krichel will release his new album on Berlin Classics on March 24, 2023, and with it a very personal tribute to the Russian pianist and composer, whose birthday will be celebrated for the 150th time just a few days later. For his eighth album, Alexander Krichel has selected works that have shaped his strong connection to Rachmaninoff. From the world-famous Prélude Op. 3 No. 2 in C-sharp minor to the virtuosic Corelli Variations and Études- Tableaux, some of the most difficult repertoire written for piano, to the concluding Vocalise, Krichel invites listeners to discover Rachmaninoff's biography musically. He wants to inspire his audience with the music of this great composer in the same way that it once captivated him.

This new recording (recorded in 2012) brings together two great, but altogether different 20th century Cello Sonatas from Russia: the gorgeous and deeply romantic cello sonata by Rachmaninoff, of near‐symphonic proportions, and the cello sonata by Prokofiev, a hybrid piece of his later period, a fascinating mixture of the romantic, the grotesque and the introspective side of the multi-faceted composer..

Chopin and Rachmaninoff were both titans of the piano, which is why their cello sonatas are as much a feast for the keyboard as for the cello itself. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov bring their considerable experience in authentic performance to this album. For the Chopin, Melnikov uses a 19th-century French Erard piano, the type that might have been played at its premiere at a private Parisian soirée in 1847. Its rounder, subtler tones would have suited this environment, its translucency allowing Chopin’s complex piano lines to shine brighter than they would on a modern grand. Melnikov has the measure of this beautiful piano, never overwhelming the creamy tones that Queyras teases from his 1696 Gioffredo Cappa cello. For the Rachmaninoff, a bigger work in every sense, Melnikov reverts to a modern Steinway, its richer, forthright sound almost orchestral in comparison. Rachmaninoff’s sonata, directly influenced by Chopin’s, feels almost like a concerto in miniature and is performed with great élan.

This is a thrilling performance, which, like the Tchaikovsky Symphony, shows the indisputably high level of the Stuttgart Philharmonic."" (Pizzicato LU) The Stuttgart Philharmonic, founded in 1924, is in its 6th year under the busy Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger. His regular work at almost all of the leading opera houses in the world makes his approach to the melodies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff just about perfect."" (American Record Guide) The present album is a showstopping production of Tchaikovskys Fourth Symphony paired with Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No. 2. The featured soloist in the concerto is Alexander Korsantia, one of the leading pianists of our time. He has been praised for piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist. (Calgary Sun). His recordings of works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Copland have won multiple awards.

Given that there are so many discs of the Rachmaninov Piano Concertos available to buy, you have to ask what makes this set different or better than the rest? It's quite refreshing for a start, that all the works are played by different pianists. My main incentive to buy it was Nikolai Petrov's fantastic performance of the 4th Concerto in G minor, its first release on CD from vinyl.

I have many versions of this great concerto. My first ever exposure to this work was a recording by Witold Malcuzynski that I have now acquired on CD. Since the 1960s I have collected recordings by many great pianists including Bronfman, Glemser, Ashkenazy, Janis, Gilels, Vasary, Horowitz, Lympany, Gieseking, Helfgott, de Larrocha, Rachmaninoff, Wild, Kapell, Bolet, Argerich, Malcuzynski - and just when I thought I'd heard all the Rach 3 had to say, along comes this sublime recording by the late great Lazar Berman. The playing is clear, romantic, musically intelligent, exciting and enjoyable and satisfying in every way.

Alexander Anissimov’s 1997 Naxos one with National Symphony Orchestra and RTÉ Philharmonic Choir…Helen Field, singing for Anissimov, is a real delight in the slow movement, poignant, lyrical and clear in enunciation in a performance that has two fine Russians (tenor Ivan Choupenitch and baritone Oleg Melnikov) as the other soloists and an approach to the score that transmits a broad, well honed spectrum of emotion.

There is a tradition among Russian composers to write an elegiac trio in memory of a departed friend. It is Tchaikovsky who first introduced this tradition with his grandiose trio in A minor dedicated to Nikolay Rubinstein. Dmitry Shostakovich carried this tradition into the twentieth century with his Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67, dedicated to the memory of his closest friend the musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky. These are the two telling works performed here in their premiere recording by the Rachmaninoff Trio de Montréal