Word: rachmaninoff
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Almost as important, no pianistcomposer had ever been as thoroughly recorded at so many key points in his life. From 1919, shortly after he fled Russia, until 1942, a year before his death in Beverly Hills, Calif., at 69, Rachmaninoff was a steady visitor to the recording studios. Beethoven, Chopin, Scriabin, Bach, Mozart, Handel, Liszt and, of course, Rachmaninoff-the music of these and other composers he committed to disc. Unfortunately, throughout most of the ensuing years, collectors have been denied a comprehensive accounting of this legacy; as soon as one new Rachmaninoff album was issued, another seemed...
...five-album, 15-LP release from RCA makes amends handsomely, if belatedly. The set contains, for example, not just the famous recording of the Second Concerto made with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1929 but also another version with the same performers from 1924. Then there is Rachmaninoff partnering Fritz Kreisler in a fancy-free performance of Beethoven's Violin Sonata in G, Op. 30, No. 3 (1928). There is a stupendous performance of Beethoven's 32 Variations in C Minor, which might well have been retitled 26 Variations since Rachmaninoff omitted variations...
What kind of keyboard interpreter was Rachmaninoff? Like composer, like pianist. He was an unabashed romantic with unsurpassed gifts for pianistic col or, rhythmic thrust and pure trickery. But his most distinguishing trait at the keyboard was probably the pesky individual life of each of his fingers. When he wrote for himself, as in his four Piano Concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Volume 5 in the new release), he filled his pages with thickets of notes. So clustered are they that one suspects that he begrudged even a moment's pause or silence, at least when...
Appealing Melodies. Rachmaninoff's composing style, like his playing, was undeniably showy at times. Further, the substance unquestionably fell short of great music. Rachmaninoff s muse simply did not have the requisite universality; try as he might, and he did try, he could not transcend for long the monochromatic lugubriousness of his emotional palette. Yet his sound is so distinctive, his melodies are so appealing, his orchestrations so skillful, that Rachmaninoff's music simply will not go away, despite the condescension of academia and the critics. He may not have written music "of his own time" (assuming serialism...
Thus, despite Rachmaninoff s short comings, the new RCA set is welcome, valuable and indeed historic. In a sense, RCA is lucky to be able to issue the collection. The company, which started out as the Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1901 and was absorbed by RCA in 1929, has an estimated 200,000 metal molds of rare early recordings sitting in a warehouse in Queens, N.Y. Unattended, it would seem. When it came time last year to assemble the Rachmaninoff anthology, many of the molds were found to be corroded, misfiled or lost. Of the material...