Anna Fedorova and the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen under Modestas Pitrenas complete their critically acclaimed cycle of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos with this recording of his Third Piano Concerto. Anna Fedorova considers Rachmaninoff’s Third one of the grandest concertos ever written, stating "it has incredible compelling power and demands mobilization of all the physical, creative and emotional abilities from both soloist and orchestra. At the same time this composition is very romantic by its nature, sort of a lyrical confession of the composer”. BBC Music Magazine has given 5-star reviews to all previous Fedorova/Rachmaninoff recordings, noting that "Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova is a remarkable artist. The clear thinking and feeling behind these Rachmaninoff concerto interpretations are refreshing indeed”. As a post scriptum to this album, Anna Fedorova performs The Messenger for solo piano written by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. It is a musical meditation, a thought for her country and fellow Ukrainians, a message of light, peace and hope for the future.

For Riccardo Chailly, celebrating Rachmaninoff in Lucerne is something dear to his heart. In 2022, the the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and their music director devoted themselves to the Second Symphony and the Piano Concerto No. 2, the most famous of all four Rachmaninoff concertos. "The harmonic ideas are his special hallmark. One need only hear three chords to recognize his creative genius immediately," Chailly once said of Rachmaninoff's timbres. Japanese pianist Mao Fujita took on this grandiose work's emotional power and virtuosity. Since winning the silver medal in the XVI Chopin Competition in 2019, this exceptional artist has been playing in the world's most renowned concert halls.

For Riccardo Chailly, celebrating Rachmaninoff in Lucerne is something dear to his heart. In 2022, the the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and their music director devoted themselves to the Second Symphony and the Piano Concerto No. 2, the most famous of all four Rachmaninoff concertos. "The harmonic ideas are his special hallmark. One need only hear three chords to recognize his creative genius immediately," Chailly once said of Rachmaninoff's timbres. Japanese pianist Mao Fujita took on this grandiose work's emotional power and virtuosity. Since winning the silver medal in the XVI Chopin Competition in 2019, this exceptional artist has been playing in the world's most renowned concert halls.

Lukáš Vondráček and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Scarcely do we encounter a connection between a musician and a composer so close, strong and energizing. When, at the age of 15, Vondráček was invited by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Czech Philharmonic to perform Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 1, he had garnered international acclaim at numerous concerts and competitions. Just a year later, the pianist toured the USA and appeared at Carnegie Hall. At the age of 29, he triumphed at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (2016), performing Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3, conducted by Marin Alsop. Love at first listen, Rachmaninoff has become his flagship composer: “Besides affording the opportunity to showcase one’s technique, his music impresses by being contrastive and having an immense dynamic range ... What more could a person keen on tone color wish? It’s sheer beauty!”

Lukáš Vondráček has been invited to perform Rachmaninoff’s concertos by the most prominent orchestras and conductors worldwide. The present album is one of the few sweet fruits of the Covid pandemic, which cleared the soloist’s otherwise jam-packed diary and afforded him peaceful time for recording. The booklet contains an interview with Lukáš Vondráček, within which he provides an account of his ample experience of and great affinity to Rachmaninoff. Yet the most powerful confession is the recording itself, made with the superb Prague Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tomáš Brauner, capturing performances rendering every detail, teeming with emotion, colour and contrast. Sheer beauty indeed! Rachmaninoff in Lukáš Vondráček’s hands. A lavish musical feast.

“I don’t want to betray that constantly sounding tone in me, through which I hear the world around,” acknowledged Sergei Rachmaninoff. This tone stimulated by the intonations of folk melodies and bell ringing, and the imagery of the Russian landscape, permeates his Second Symphony. It became a landmark work for the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, whose performances in the leading concert venues of Europe and Asia were widely admired. Dmitry Liss, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Orchestra has created a musical collective of remarkable quality during his 25-year tenure. A life-long personal favorite of Liss, Rachmaninoff is frequently included in the Orchestra’s programs, both in Russia and abroad. “For me, his music is as much a symbol of the flourishing Russian culture of the Silver Age as works by Bunin and Chekhov”, states Liss. “His music always captivates me with its incredible emotional sincerity expressed in a reserved, noble and aristocratic way. Perhaps it’s this combination which gives his music such extraordinary depth.”

Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto was composed while he was a student at the Moscow Conservatoire, then fully reworked before he left Russia in 1917 and again in 1919. It is hard to explain why it never achieved a higher level of popularity – it has all of the melodic beauty, passion and brilliance found throughout the composer’s music. The Fourth Piano Concerto was much revised after harsh criticism at its premiere but it occupies a unique place in Rachmaninoff’s oeuvre, showing a progression from lush Romanticism towards the muscular transparency of his later works. The electrifying Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is a concerto in all but name – the work’s sense of fun and demonic bravura has ensured its place among the most-loved and often performed works for piano and orchestra.

REVIEWS:

Eager and grandiose in this performance, the Piano Concerto No. 1 (final version) is given an absorbing account, Boris Giltburg in dynamic form, very ably supported by the detailed Brussels Philharmonic and Vassily Sinaisky, a reading of shapely flexibility and quixotic zeal. But the big test comes with the opening of the underestimated Fourth Concerto (second revision) and the clarity needed for the complex scoring to register fully; pretty good, maybe in need of just a tad more presence from the woodwinds… overall though a distinguished rendition, energetic (fabulous finger-work from Giltburg in the Finale), impassioned, supple, and savored.

As for Paganini Rhapsody, this is one of the best, a zesty incident-packed (but not attention-seeking) palate-cleanser. Excellent sound and production values complete a notable issue.

-- Colin's Column (Colin Anderson)

This is Boris Giltburg’s folowup to his previously released accounts of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3 with Carlos Miguel Prieto and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. These accounts of the First and Fourth Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody complete a handsome survey of the works for piano and orchestra that you will want to include in your CD library.

-- Audio Visual Club of Atlantz (Phil Muse)

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. 2023 is the year of Rachmaninoff anniversaries: April 1 would have marked the 150th birthday of the Russian composer, pianist and conductor, and March 28 marks the 80th anniversary of his death.

High time for Alexander Krichel, after the great success of his first Rachmaninoff album in 2015 on Sony Classical, to dedicate himself once again to the composer who has always accompanied and shaped his playing and his career. With two of the greatest contemporary Russian pianists as teachers - Alexander Krichel was Vladimir Krainev's last student in Hanover and studied at the Royal College of Music with Dmitri Alexeev - the exceptional Hamburg-born artist developed a strong connection to the Russian piano school. This is noticeable in his playing - he combines risk-taking keyboard thunder with a highly sensitive feeling for sound. Alexander Krichel had his first encounter with Rachmaninoff when he was nine years old at a youth piano competition, where an older competitor entered the Prélude in C-sharp minor. "I was just talking to my piano teacher, and although I only heard the music in the background, the first three dramatic notes grabbed me right away and wouldn't let go," the pianist said. In order to expose his audience directly to the captivating effect of Rachmaninoff, Alexander Krichel opens his album with precisely this piece, which is also biographically one of Rachmaninoff's first works.

Together with the Prélude Op. 23 No. 5 in G minor and the Prélude Op. 32 No. 12 in G-sharp minor, the works quite literally form a prelude to the journey through Rachmaninoff's musical biography. With the Études-Tableaux op. 39, Alexander Krichel places one of Rachmaninoff's pianistic highlights at the center of his album, which, with great successes in South America and Asia, became a door opener for him personally to the stages of the world. The composer described the nine highly virtuosic etudes as musical "paintings" that always place the strong emotional message above the challenging technical background. The final work, composed by Rachmaninoff for solo piano 15 years after his emigration to the United States, is the Corelli Variations, miniatures that range from jazzy to classically virtuosic and are so individual that each could stand alone as a composition.

The album culminates with one of Rachmaninoff's most famous works: the Vocalise. With it, Alexander Krichel closes the circle and returns to the key of the first composition: C-sharp minor, a key for which Rachmaninoff was so well known that he was even called "Mr. C Sharp Minor" in the USA. "Whether I'm soaring high or saddened to death, I feel a special connection to Rachmaninoff; we share a very similar intense emotionality," is how Krichel describes his relationship with Sergei Rachmaninoff. "Especially in difficult or deeply sad moments, his music shows me that I am neither alone with my feeling of melancholy, nor that it is wrong to give in to it. In his compositions I don't look for consolation, but I find a friend who understands me and with whom I can share every feeling." "My Rachmaninoff" will be released on CD and 2 LP on March 24, 2023 by Berlin Classics as well as all known streaming services.

Learn more about Elite Recordings and the revival of their VOX Classics albums on the Naxos Classical Spotlight Podcast!

Sergey Rachmaninoff's concertos for piano and orchestra continue to be his most successful compositions together with his second symphony. The piano concerto No. 3 belongs to the most demanding repertoire ever written for this genre. The composer himself cited it as his favorite. Abbey Simon was a pianist in the great Romantic tradition. His repertoire centered on Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninoff and Ravel, and he had a virtuoso technique which he employed with effortless ease coupled with a smooth, clear sound. Internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin has received not less than six GRAMMY-Awards and numerous other prizes and has conducted virtually all the leading orchestras in the world. The recordings of American orchestras produced for VOX by the legendary, GRAMMY-Award winning Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be among the very finest sounding orchestral recordings ever made.

REVIEW:

Pianist Abbey Simon who came onto the scene in the 1940s quickly established a reputation as one of the best musicians at the time. His interpretations of these two warhorses of the repertoire are refined, clear headed and devoid of any exaggerated mannerisms or hyperbole so common these days. Nonetheless, they prove highly sensitive to the emotive aspects of the music. There have been so many recordings of this music in the interim 45 years or so since then, that new pianists feel the need to impose their own personal stamp on the music in order to stand out from the crowd, to the detriment of the music itself.

-- Classical Music Sentinel (Jean-Yves Duperron)

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. Rachmaninoff composed the Prélude in C sharp minor in 1892, originally for piano, at the beginning of his career. Stokowski’s orchestration, performed here, whilst not the only one in existence, is certainly the best known and arguably the most successful.

After Trio 258 record (CC 72920) with the immense Second Piano Trio, here is Challenge Classics second tribute to Rachmaninov, celebrating his 150th Anniversary. Young cellist Ella van Poucke offers the monumental Cello Sonata, two very early short pieces and the First Piano Trio. As a bonus, she adds a piece dedicated to her by Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin. This is the much awaited follow-up to Ella’s Schumann debut (CC 72871), that was acclaimed by the worldwide press. Gramophone: "this is an impressive album from a soloists whose performances I look forward to hearing more of in the future."

Rachmaninoff was one of the most gifted pianists of his time. His technical skills and musical expressiveness were unsurpassed and enabled him to thoroughly explore and expand the boundaries of what's possible through his own compositions. Although his music is strongly rooted in the tradition of his predecessors, it gains novelty through the pioneering work of the "last romantic". Star pianist Peter Rösel devoted himself to these legendary works in a series of recordings. The elaborate remaster of the original tapes included in this edition now allows his masterful interpretation and Rachmaninoff's work to resound in new splendor.

Sergey Rachmaninoff's symphonic career had a rocky start with the premiere of his First Symphony, now recognized as one of the Russian symphonic works of the late 19th century. Both the powerful First Symphony and the gloriously melodic Second, with its lush harmonic Adagio second movement, are haunted by the Dies irae chant melody. Rachmaninoff considered his Third Symphony to be one of his finest works, alongside the exquisitely and virtuosic Symphonic Dances. The enduring attraction of these symphonies is enhanced by the 'impressive, highly desirable interpretations' (Gramophone) in this acclaimed edition conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

Past praise for previously released volumes included in this set:

Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 3, Symphonic Dances

The more garish aspects of the Symphonic Dances, with its Dies irae quotation morphing into a Russian Alleluia, and the percussion parts generally, are kept under control, while the symphony’s glorious melodies, the last stand of the Romantic era in 1936, are allowed to flower luxuriantly. A crack Russian or British orchestra might be smoother in places, but there is a confident musicality here that is immensely appealing, and it has everything to do with a group of young players who realize that they are under the gun and have what it takes to succeed, under seasoned leadership. Highly recommended.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead & Symphony No. 1

This recording of the First Symphony is arguably the finest since Ashkenazy’s with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for Decca. Slatkin grinds out the opening bars with real menace, and he conceals the first movement’s episodic construction with flowing tempos and smartly managed transitions. The climax of the development section uses the glockenspiel part that seems to come and go in various recordings, but not the rest of the percussion that we find, say, with Litton on Virgin. Through it all the Detroit Symphony plays splendidly.

The crepuscular scherzo has an attractive lilt, while the Larghetto is just that: a small Largo, not one of Rachmaninov’s more hot and heavy statements in the mode of Symphony No. 2. Kudos to Slatkin for catching the movement’s gentle melancholy so well. As for the finale, it begins with plenty of the requisite panache, and culminates with a dark, powerful, and threatening coda that, if not quite as screamingly intense as Ashkenazy’s (the tempo is a bit quicker), comes as close as makes no difference. The trombones really put on a show here.

As for The Isle of the Dead, Slatkin’s performance doesn’t languish as some others do, and it’s all to the good. You really feel the five-in-a-bar rhythm in this performance, the lapping of the waves against the shore. The climaxes have tremendous impact, and the final appearance of the Dies irae sends a shiver down the spine. The work is all the more gripping for having such a strong rhythmic profile, and like the symphony it’s beautifully played (and recorded). Slatkin always has performed Rachmaninov as well as just about anyone alive today, and this cycle, quietly and with little fanfare as it has gradually appeared, sustains his reputation.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Navona Records presents SHOSTAKOVICH / RACHMANINOFF: SONATAS FOR CELLO AND PIANO, an album that highlights the musical expression and virtuosity of these renowned works.

Acclaimed award-winning soloist Carmine Miranda and GRAMMY-nominated Nashville Symphony pianist Robert Marler combine their virtuosity with the legendary three-time GRAMMY-nominated producer Alan Shacklock and celebrated mastering engineer Tommy Dorsey (Berlin Philharmonic – Deutsche Grammophon) to deliver the highest quality performances of these works.

Deeply expressive with interplay and virtuosic passages, these two sonatas are held to high regard by pianists and cellists alike. Once turning points in the lives of Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff, these works have stood the test of time, rewarded with commanding performances by cellist Carmine Miranda and pianist Robert Marler.

REVIEWS:

These two well-known sonatas are treated to handsome performances. The Shostakovich is perhaps a touch too Romantic, with prominent cello slides, yet a wonderful sense of buoyancy. The Rachmaninoff is passionate and delicate as the mood demands, and never indulgent.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The first thing to be said about their version of the Shostakovich D minor (1934) is its pace – this is one of the swiftest accounts I have encountered, full of vim and vigor in the three fast movements, ardent in its lyricism in the Largo. The sonata was written at a time of emotional upheaval in the composer’s personal life, during his brief divorce from his first wife, Nina. Miranda and Marler catch the music’s mercurial, passionate nature as well as any pair have done.

There is a similar thrust to their account of the Rachmaninoff Sonata, too, full of impulsion in the quicker movements. This permits them to relish the lyrical moments (the opening Allegro’s second subject, for instance, and the Andante third movement) without wallowing in what can sometimes seem like an over-ripe style. Praise to Robert Marler’s accompaniment: a fiendishly difficult part that can easily overwhelm the cello but played here with a lightness of touch that would not be amiss in Schubert.

-- Gramophone

Learn more about Elite Recordings and the revival of their VOX Classics albums on the Naxos Classical Spotlight Podcast!

Sergey Rachmaninov’s orchestral works range from 1887, when he was not yet 14, to 1940, when he produced his valedictory work. His Second Symphony was written between 1906 and 1908 and the composer expressed doubts about being able to compose a symphony. This program of works was recorded by the Saint Louis Symphony with Leonard Slatkin.

Challenge Classics celebrates the Rachmaninov anniversary (150 years from his birth) with two noteworthy releases. The first one is a stunning debut recording by a young piano trio with strong, original and much thought-out ideas. Their account of Rachmaninov gigantic Second Piano Trio takes the listener back to the ‘period’ playing of the composer’s contemporaries. Not only – and not just – gut strings, but: more liberty and agility in tempo, rhythm and phrasing, in the quest for the ‘human voice’, which was the romantic basic principle of interpretation. This philological venture is anything but a cold ‘case study’. Just listen and get seduced by the warmth and passion of the music and its performance.