Best of Rachmaninoff

In an album celebrating the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's birth, cellist John-Henry Crawford and pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion explore the voice-like qualities of the composer's melodies. The cello's expressive timbres are often likened to the human voice, making it the perfect vehicle to showcase this aspect of Rachmaninoff's output.The release begins with an arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Elegie - originally for solo piano - that expands the work's texture to articulate a more clearly defined melodic line.

Russian-born American virtuoso pianist in the Romantic tradition. He was celebrated for his flawless technique and an almost orchestral quality of tone. Horowitz’s performances of works by Franz Liszt, Sergey Rachmaninoff, Frédéric Chopin, Aleksandr Scriabin, Domenico Scarlatti, and Sergey Prokofiev were admired for their technical precision and dynamic range.

John Wilson and Sinfonia of London release their second album of Rachmaninoff. The Second Symphony was mostly composed in Dresden – where Rachmaninoff was escaping the political and professional pressures of Russia – in 1906 – 07. An hour’s worth of music, the symphony is one of his largest works after the operas, and is widely viewed as one of his greatest works. It was possibly of some significance to the composer, following the less than auspicious début of his First Symphony (which he withdrew after the première). First performed in St Petersburg and Moscow, conducted by the composer, the Second Symphony was an immediate success with audiences and critics alike, and remains a mainstay of the orchestral repertoire to this day. Rachmaninoff dedicated the score to his teacher Sergei Taneyev, who was a pupil of Tchaikovsky.

Like her other duo-recording venture with pianist Alexandre Rabinovitch, this album again demonstrates why pianist Martha Argerich is the grand dame of two-piano works. This album, with pianist Nelson Freire, offers another interpretation of the Rachmaninoff Second Suite for Two Pianos as well as a transcription of Ravel's La Valse and Lutoslawski's Variations on a Theme of Paganini. Unlike many other piano duos, Argerich and Freire are capable of drawing an amazingly convincing, almost symphonic sound out of their two instruments.

This 10-CD set wowed audiences when it first appeared in 1992, and with good reason – although music scholars and classical record collectors were well aware of it, the general classical audience of the late twentieth century likely had no inkling of how extensively Rachmaninov had recorded and otherwise preserved aspects of his playing and performances (in addition to his actual recordings, there were also the piano rolls that he did for the American Piano Company, which are a matter separate from this collection, and transcribed and released by Decca/London Records on CD).