CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer Avie YELLOW Catalogue No. AV2191 BLACK Job Title Rachmaninov 1 & 4 Page Nos. 24 - 1 RACHMANINOV PIANO CONCERTOS 1 & 4 RHAPSODY ON A THEME OF PAGANINI ˆ VasilyPetrenko SimonTrpceski AV2191 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer Avie YELLOW Catalogue No. AV2191 BLACK Job Title Rachmaninov 1 & 4 Page Nos. 2 - 3 SERGEI RACHMANINOV 1873 – 1943 Piano Concerto no. 1 • Klavierkonzert Nr. 1 • Concerto pour piano no. 1 op.1 in F sharp minor · fis-moll · fa dièse mineur 26:50 1 I Vivace 12:17 2 II Andante 6:32 3 III Allegro vivace 7:57 Piano Concerto no. 4 • Klavierkonzert Nr. 4 • Concerto pour piano no. 4 op.40 in G minor · g-moll · sol mineur 27:03 4 I Allegro vivace 9:59 5 II Largo 7:34 6 III Allegro vivace 9:30 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer Avie YELLOW Catalogue No. AV2191 BLACK Job Title Rachmaninov 1 & 4 Page Nos. 4 - 5 Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini op.43 22:54 7 No.1 Introduction – Allegro vivace 0:08 22 No.16 Variation 14 – L’istesso tempo 0:44 8 No.2 Variation 1 – Precedente 0:21 23 No.17 Variation 15 – Più vivo scherzando 1:10 9 No.3 Theme – L’istesso tempo 0:20 24 No.18 Variation 16 – Allegretto 1:33 10 No.4 Variation 2 – L’istesso tempo 0:19 25 No.19 Variation 17 – [Allegretto] 1:33 11 No.5 Variation 3 – L’istesso tempo 0:27 26 No.20 Variation 18 – Andante cantabile 2:49 12 No.6 Variation 4 – Più vivo 0:29 27 No.21 Variation 19 – A tempo vivace 0:27 13 No.7 Variation 5 – Tempo precedente 0:31 28 No.22 Variation 20 – Un poco più vivo 0:35 14 No.8 Variation 6 – L’istesso tempo 1:01 29 No.23 Variation 21 – Un poco più vivo 0:25 15 No.9 Variation 7 – Meno mosso, a tempo moderato 1:11 30 No.24 Variation 22 – Un poco più vivo, alla breve 1:36 16 No.10 Variation 8 – Tempo 1 0:35 31 No.25 Variation 23 – L’istesso tempo 0:49 17 No.11 Variation 9 – L’istesso tempo 0:33 32 No.26 Variation 24 – A tempo un poco meno mosso 1:13 18 No.12 Variation 10 – Poco marcato 0:56 ˆ 19 No.13 Variation 11 – Moderato 1:22 Simon Trpceski piano 20 No.14 Variation 12 – Tempo di minuetto 1:17 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra 21 No.15 Variation 13 – Allegro 0:30 Vasily Petrenko conductor CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer Avie YELLOW Catalogue No. AV2191 BLACK Job Title Rachmaninov 1 & 4 Page Nos. 6 - 7 SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943) piano and orchestra a dazzling celebration of the admitted Rachmaninov to the Conservatoire’s rate”. For the rest of his life, Rachmaninov would sheer creative joy of the virtuoso’s life. composition class, proclaiming that “For him, I make his living as a pianist. He toured globally, The three concertos on this recording trace a 20th- predict a great future”. With an endorsement like averaging some 50 concerts a year. Audiences century life – a life of tradition uprooted; of global that, who could blame Rachmaninov for self- never lost their appetite for this living legend, the travel, celebrity and exile; of old worlds lost and Piano Concerto No.1 in F sharp minor, Op.1 confidence? He wrote the second and third great romantic composer of luscious, turn-of-the- new worlds found. Sergei Rachmaninov was born Vivace movements of his First Concerto in just “two and a century masterpieces like the Second Piano in the world of Tchaikovsky and Chekhov. When he Andante half days”. Concerto and Second Symphony. died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1943, he hadn’t Allegro vivace seen Russia for over a quarter of a century. So naturally, his Opus 1 begins with a proud The problem was that by the 1920s Rachmaninov No-one at the Moscow Conservatoire on 17 March fanfare, and ends with a glittering cascade of was no longer that man. “Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto (1891) was 1892 knew that the quiet, lanky teenager they all notes. This is the work of a melancholy, brilliant always held that an artist must constantly go both the beginning and end of his Russian career. called Seryosha would become the greatest boy-genius, from the high noon of Imperial forward, constantly seek perfection, and that one Revising it, in 1917, he anticipated that he’d soon pianist of the 20th century – and the composer of Russia’s ‘silver age’. It’s not as lush as the Second who marks time is already going backwards”, be relying a lot more heavily on his piano playing, one of the most popular piano concertos ever or Third concertos; at 18, Rachmaninov was more recalled his sister-in-law. Hence Rachmaninov’s and this ‘new’ concerto seemed like a timely written. So, as he sat at the piano to rehearse his interested in panache than nostalgia. But there’s Fourth Piano Concerto, written in New York and addition to his repertoire. But by then, of course, brand-new concerto (proudly christened ‘Opus 1’) still room for romance – in the perfumed nocturne Germany, completed in August 1926, and audiences had heard his Second and Third with the Conservatoire’s principal, Vasily Safonov, of the Andante – and he could already write a dedicated to his friend Nikolai Medtner; concertos – and they’d decided what a conducting, they were – to put it mildly – glorious tune, placed here as a tender interlude in Rachmaninov’s first orchestral score since leaving Rachmaninov concerto was supposed to sound surprised. “Ordinarily, Safonov would brutally and the middle of the fiery finale. Rachmaninov later Russia. And hence the universal – almost knee- like. The First never matched the popularity of the unceremoniously change anything he wished in laughed at the concerto’s youthful pretensions (“it jerk – disdain that greeted its premiere in Second and Third. Still less did the Fourth (1926). these student scores”, recalled a fellow-student. frightens me!”) but it always meant a lot to him, Philadelphia in March 1927. “Neither futuristic Rachmaninov now lived in a world of long distance “But he had a hard time with Rachmaninov. This and at one of the darkest moments in his life, he music nor music of the future”, snorted the New trains, New York apartments, jazz records and student not only refused to accept alterations, but returned to it. In the autumn of 1917 he revised the York Evening Telegram. The Herald Tribune (echo- speedboats. (He’d attended the premiere of had the audacity to stop Safonov – pointing out his First Concerto, transforming it into the version we ing what most of the audience probably thought) Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in 1924.) Yet he was errors in tempo and nuance!” hear today. He worked on in his Moscow flat, declared it “neither so expressive nor so effective still, beneath it all, a creative artist – a composer ignoring the gunfire of the Bolshevik Revolution in as its famous companion [the Second] in C minor”. who had responded to this new world, and who The 18-year-old Rachmaninov had come up the the streets below, and finishing the job on 10 Medtner, meanwhile, found it troublingly modern. longed to play something different from his own hard way. His boyhood reads like something from November. Six weeks later, he left Russia forever. early hits. Chekhov: the family estates frittered away, None of them seems to have grasped that this was parents bickering in a cramped St Petersburg flat; music neither of the future nor of the past, but of Piano Concerto No.4 in G minor, Op.40 And in the early 1930s, after he’d managed to the younger son packed off to study piano in 1926. Listen to its surging opening, as create a new home for himself, Rachmaninov Moscow as a cheaper alternative to sending him Allegro vivace Rachmaninov reverses his old procedure and shaped his experiences into one of the most into the army. He studied hard, and his teacher Largo presents a big climactic tune right at the very perfect masterpieces of 20th-century music. introduced him to the greatest names in Russian Allegro vivace beginning. That, he’s almost saying, can be taken Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is the work of a music. And another talent soon revealed itself. “I as read – now on to the main business; which man born in Imperial Russia but living in an art remember how he grew pensive, even gloomy”, When Rachmaninov fled the Revolution in 1917, he means quicksilver moods, railroad rhythms, false deco villa, and of a celebrity pianist who was also another friend remembered. “As he walked about, had just 500 roubles and a case full of scores. But finishes, and big-band orchestral verve (at one a deeply serious creative artist. Above all, it’s the he fixed his eyes on some distant point, whistling a friend had simply pointed to Rachmaninov’s point in the finale, the clarinet seems poised to product of a composer who’d seen and suffered inaudibly and gesturing as if conducting”. huge, long-fingered hands: “You should be the last launch a blues). This is a man on the move, and much – but who chose to make his final work for Tchaikovsky himself marked the exam that to worry about that – those are your exchange indeed, Rachmaninov worked on the concerto as CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer Avie YELLOW Catalogue No.