Lso Gergiev Rachmaninov

This highly anticipated album-set brings together Valery Gergiev's acclaimed cycle of the complete Rachmaninov symphonies. He leads the London Symphony Orchestra in performances recorded between 2008 and 2015. These masterful accounts are accompanied by his Symphonic Dances and and two symphonic poems by Mily Balakirev that echo the luxurious textures present throughout Rachmaninov's music.

Each release from the Mariinsky label to date has featured music by some of the great Russian composers with whom the Mariinsky Theatre has enjoyed close relationships. For the label’s sixth release, Valery Gergiev turns to the music of Igor Stravinsky, a composer who grew up in St Petersburg, attending performances at the Mariinsky Theatre where his father sang. Less than four years separate the premieres of Les Noces and Oedipus Rex, yet they each represent high-points in two distinct phases of Stravinsky’s career. Although the concept of Les Noces is highly innovative – a ‘dance cantata’ – the music remains rooted in Russian folk traditions. Stravinsky dedicated the ballet to Diaghilev, whose Ballet Russes gave the première, and it marks the crowning glory of Stravinsky’s so-called ‘second Russian period’. The opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex is the first great work of Stravinsky’s neo-classical period.