Composer: Sergei Rachmaninov, Mily Balakirev
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Audio CD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: DSF (tracks)
Label: LSO Live
Size: 2.42 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Sergei Rachmaninov
Symphony No 1 in D minor, Op 13
01. I. Grave – Allegro ma non troppo
02. II. Allegro animato
03. III. Larghetto
04. IV. Allegro con fuoco
Mily Balakirev
05. Tamara
Rachmaninov’s star shone brightly at the beginning of his career. He was barely twenty when his oneact opera Aleko, composed as a graduation exercise from the Moscow Conservatory, was praised by Tchaikovsky and performed at the Bolshoi. He had also already composed his First Piano Concerto. Following two smaller-scale orchestral pieces, The Rock and the Fantasy on Gypsy Themes, he felt ready to tackle the most demanding orchestral form. He devoted most of 1895 to composing his enormously ambitious First Symphony, a work that would surpass everything he had yet achieved. ‘I believed I had opened up entirely new paths’, he recalled many years later.