Sergei Rachmaninov Complete Works

The complete Works for Piano and Orchestra, with Rafael Orozco playing the extraordinarily demanding piano score, which Serge; with his huge, slender, nimble fingers tended to compose to impress people and make many back away, is more than merely admirable when combined with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under the Direction of Edo De Waart.

All of Rachmaninov’s music - from his earliest student compositions to his final masterpieces – has been collected together for the first time on 32 CDs, in what is definitively the most complete and comprehensive edition of Rachmaninov’s works ever released.

The great Sergei Rachmaninoff was not primarily known as an opera composer. However, his three operas have an important place in the music history books. This three-disc set includes all three of Rachamninoff's operas in their entirety (one per disc) and are presented in jaw-dropping performances under the baton of conductor Neeme Jarvi. The orchestra as well as the soloists and choirs truly deliver emotionally-drenched performances on all three operas.

When Jorge Bolet died in October 1990 the world lost one of its last ‘great Romantics’. Spirituality, a luxuriant tonal palette, a real sense of architecture, breadth, grandeur, all allied to a prodigious technique – these were just some of the qualities that informed his playing. Now, for the first time, Decca collects all the recordings he made for the label, from 1977 to 1990. Released for the first time and included in this set, is his last recording, a selection of Chopin’s Nocturnes and the Berceuse, recorded just seven months before his death.

Mikhail Pletnev and the newly formed Rachmaninoff International Orchestra (RIO) performed under the baton of Kent Nagano all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in October 2023.

This fabulous five disc set is replete with some of those old Stokowski warhorses all recorded in absolutely mind boggling Phase 4 sound, overblown perhaps but astounding for its time. Decca's remastering is absolutely magnificent and the discs are jam packed with almost six hours of music. This is another fine memorial to a great conductor who remained astonishingly vital until the very end of his life.