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Piano Classics

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 2; Core

$19.99

Details

Composer
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Artist
Ekaterina Litvintseva, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie
Format
CD
Label
Piano Classics
Released
Mar 21, 2025
Catalog #
PCL10244
UPC
5029365102445

About

Back in 2015, Fanfare singled out Ekaterina Litvintseva's first solo album of Rachmaninoff, including the Moments musicaux Op.16, as an 'impressive outing. Her playing is tonally rich and extremely thoughtful.' Since then, she has assembled an impressive and critically acclaimed catalogue on Piano Classics, including most recently the great Trio elegiaque which Rachmaninoff wrote in memory of Tchaikovsky: 'an attractive and valuable disc' (Fanfare). Litvintseva now turns to a trio of uncontested masterpieces by the Russian composer, demonstrating within a single album the range of his stylistic evolution over the course of 40 years. He was still a teenager, studying at the Moscow Conservatoire, when he wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1891. On the instruction of his teachers, he took the Grieg Concerto as a model, and poured his own invention into it: a remarkably successful strategy, as it turned out, because the finished work is both strong and personal, touched with many of those fingerprints of gesture and harmony which we have come to think of as quintessentially Rachmaninoff. These include flights of lyric fantasy and equally sudden, unexpected turns towards melancholy introspection. Rachmaninoff had become an international celebrity by 1913, when he took his family to live the high life with him in Rome, at a home which Tchaikovsky had once used. In the Italian capital he began work on the imposing Second Piano Sonata, though the work had to be completed back at the family estate, Ivanovka, when his daughters came down with typhus. Rachmaninoff overhauled the Sonata in 1931, cutting and in some places simplifying it's form, and it is this version which Litvintseva plays: a stylistic bridge between mid-period and late-style in a composer whose capacity for reinvention has often been underestimated. By 1941 he was an exile living in the US and Switzerland, where he wrote his Variations on a theme of Corelli - the 'La folia' theme adopted by countless of his predecessors. Informed by decades of pianistic and creative mastery, Rachmaninoff makes the theme his own with a neoclassical severity and haunting economy of expression. Thus, taken as a whole, Ekaterina Litvintseva's new album pays a wide-ranging and personal tribute to a composer who has inspired her playing since her formation in Siberia. - Ekaterina Litvintseva is one of the most remarkable pianists of her generation. Her recordings won her enthusiastic acclaim in the international press: "a notable moment in the history of Chopin interpretation" (Fanfare); "a sense of spontaneous invention" in Mozart's K.271 (Gramophone) and "an expressive depth" in Brahms's 1st Piano Concerto (BBC Music Magazine). She previously recorded for Piano Classics an album with piano works by Dora Pejacevic (PCL10226), as well as the Works for Piano and Orchestra by Chopin (PCL10142 and 10274), which was a CD Of The Week at Classic FM. - In this new release Litvintseva displays her innate feeling for the idiom in works by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): the youthfully exuberant First Piano Concerto, the monumental Second Piano Sonata and the innovative Corelli variations Op. 42, cornerstones of the piano repertoire nowadays, and played with vigour, drama and a deep sense of poetry. The concerto is accompanied by the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, conducted by Vahan Mardirossian.

Tracklist 29 tracks

  1. 1 I. Vivace 14:17
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Vivace
    Duration
    14:17
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
    Ensemble
    Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie
    Conductor
    Vahan Mardirossian
  2. 2 II. Andante 06:33
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Andante
    Duration
    06:33
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
    Ensemble
    Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie
    Conductor
    Vahan Mardirossian
  3. 3 III. Allegro vivace 08:48
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Allegro vivace
    Duration
    08:48
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
    Ensemble
    Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie
    Conductor
    Vahan Mardirossian
  4. 4 I. Allegro agitato 07:47
    Track
    4
    Title
    I. Allegro agitato
    Duration
    07:47
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  5. 5 II. Non allegro - Lento - 06:06
    Track
    5
    Title
    II. Non allegro - Lento -
    Duration
    06:06
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  6. 6 III. Allegro molto 05:29
    Track
    6
    Title
    III. Allegro molto
    Duration
    05:29
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  7. 7 Theme: Andante 00:58
    Track
    7
    Title
    Theme: Andante
    Duration
    00:58
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  8. 8 Variation 1: Poco più mosso 00:48
    Track
    8
    Title
    Variation 1: Poco più mosso
    Duration
    00:48
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  9. 9 Variation 2: L'istesso tempo 00:40
    Track
    9
    Title
    Variation 2: L'istesso tempo
    Duration
    00:40
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  10. 10 Variation 3: Tempo di menuetto 00:38
    Track
    10
    Title
    Variation 3: Tempo di menuetto
    Duration
    00:38
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  11. 11 Variation 4: Andante 01:03
    Track
    11
    Title
    Variation 4: Andante
    Duration
    01:03
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  12. 12 Variation 5: Allegro (ma non tanto) 00:21
    Track
    12
    Title
    Variation 5: Allegro (ma non tanto)
    Duration
    00:21
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  13. 13 Variation 6: L'istesso tempo 00:23
    Track
    13
    Title
    Variation 6: L'istesso tempo
    Duration
    00:23
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  14. 14 Variation 7: Vivace 00:31
    Track
    14
    Title
    Variation 7: Vivace
    Duration
    00:31
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  15. 15 Variation 8: Adagio misterioso 01:02
    Track
    15
    Title
    Variation 8: Adagio misterioso
    Duration
    01:02
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  16. 16 Variation 9: Un poco più mosso 01:09
    Track
    16
    Title
    Variation 9: Un poco più mosso
    Duration
    01:09
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  17. 17 Variation 10: Allegro scherzando 00:39
    Track
    17
    Title
    Variation 10: Allegro scherzando
    Duration
    00:39
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  18. 18 Variation 11: Allegro vivace 00:23
    Track
    18
    Title
    Variation 11: Allegro vivace
    Duration
    00:23
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  19. 19 Variation 12: L'istesso tempo 00:36
    Track
    19
    Title
    Variation 12: L'istesso tempo
    Duration
    00:36
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  20. 20 Variation 13: Agitato 00:34
    Track
    20
    Title
    Variation 13: Agitato
    Duration
    00:34
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  21. 21 Intermezzo 01:16
    Track
    21
    Title
    Intermezzo
    Duration
    01:16
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  22. 22 Variation 14: Andante (come prima) 00:56
    Track
    22
    Title
    Variation 14: Andante (come prima)
    Duration
    00:56
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  23. 23 Variation 15: L'istesso tempo 01:24
    Track
    23
    Title
    Variation 15: L'istesso tempo
    Duration
    01:24
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  24. 24 Variation 16: Allegro vivace 00:30
    Track
    24
    Title
    Variation 16: Allegro vivace
    Duration
    00:30
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  25. 25 Variation 17: Meno mosso 01:02
    Track
    25
    Title
    Variation 17: Meno mosso
    Duration
    01:02
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  26. 26 Variation 18: Allegro con brio 00:33
    Track
    26
    Title
    Variation 18: Allegro con brio
    Duration
    00:33
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  27. 27 Variation 19: Più mosso, Agitato 00:30
    Track
    27
    Title
    Variation 19: Più mosso, Agitato
    Duration
    00:30
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  28. 28 Variation 20: Più mosso 01:07
    Track
    28
    Title
    Variation 20: Più mosso
    Duration
    01:07
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva
  29. 29 Coda: Andante 01:22
    Track
    29
    Title
    Coda: Andante
    Duration
    01:22
    Composer
    Sergei Rachmaninoff
    Performer
    Ekaterina Litvintseva