Composer: Sergei Rachmaninov
Orchestra: Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Lan Shui
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BIS
Release: 2021
Size: 4.67 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
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
05. Symphony in D Minor “Youth”
06. Prince Rostislav
Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27
07. I. Largo – Allegro moderato
08. II. Allegro molto
09. III. Adagio
10. IV. Allegro vivace
11. Vocalise, Op. 34 No. 14 (Version for Orchestra)
Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 44
12. I. Lento – Allegro moderato
13. II. Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro vivace
14. III. Allegro
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
15. I. Non allegro
16. II. Andante con moto. Tempo di valse
17. III. Lento assai – Allegro vivace
18. The Rock, Op. 7 (Version for Orchestra)
Aleko (Excerpts)
19. Introduction
20. Men’s Dance
21. Intermezzo
22. Women’s Dance
23. Capriccio on Gypsy Themes, Op. 12 (Version for Orchestra)
24. Scherzo in D Minor
25. The Miserly Knight, Op. 24: Prelude
26. Isle of the Dead, Op. 29
Sergei Rachmaninov was one of the twentieth century’s outstanding pianists, but the large body of purely orchestral music he composed is no less an expression of his musical character. His great strength was that he managed to preserve intact a vision he had discovered very early in life. This contemporary of Schoenberg, Scriabin, Ravel and Ives was unconcerned with musical fashions and had no wish to be a pioneer. Instead, and over a period of half a century he refined and deepened a language which derived naturally from his late-nineteenth-century Russian background. With this four-disc box set, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui present a comprehensive collection of Rachmaninov’s music for orchestra – from the Scherzo in D minor, his first surviving piece for orchestra, completed just before his fifteenth birthday to the canonical works: the Symphonies and the Symphonic Dances.
The recordings were made between 2008 and 2015, with the three symphonies (previously released on separate discs) described as ‘eine formidable Gesamteinspielung’ on the website Pizzicato. But there is much more to Rachmaninov’s orchestral music besides the symphonies, and this box offers the listener opportunity to explore the young composer’s fascination with Gypsy themes (in the excerpts from the opera Aleko and Capriccio bohémien) as well as his lifelong preoccupation with death, in the form of the four notes of the Dies irae plainchant motif. This is heard again and again in Rachmaninov’s music, up until his very last work, the Symphonic Dances, where, at the very end of the third and final dance, this symbol of death is finally laid to rest.