Rachmaninoff S Sergej Vasil Evi Rachmaninov Recollections Told To Oskar Von Riesemann

Sergei Rachmaninoff—the last great Russian romantic and arguably the finest pianist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—wrote 83 songs, which are performed and beloved throughout the world. Like German Lieder and French mélodies, the songs were composed for one singer, accompanied by a piano. In this complete collection, Richard D. Sylvester provides English translations of the songs, along with accurate transliterations of the original texts and detailed commentary. Since Rachmaninoff viewed these "romances" primarily as performances and painstakingly annotated the scores, this volume will be especially valuable for students, scholars, and practitioners of voice and piano.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was a renowned composer, pianist, and conductor. Because he was a member of the Russian aristocracy, he fled the country after the tsar's abdication, and eventually relocated in the United States. Many of his compositions are for piano, yet he also composed orchestral and symphony works, three operas, choral and liturgical works, some chamber works, and numerous songs. This guide catalogues his numerous works and performances, provides a detailed bibliography, and includes a discography of recordings released within the last half-century. Cross-referenced throughout, this volume should appeal to music and Rachmaninoff scholars who are looking for a comprehensive guide to further research.

Throughout his career as composer, conductor, and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was an intensely private individual. When Bertensson and Leyda’s 1956 biography appeared, it lifted the veil of secrecy from several areas of Rachmaninoff’s life, especially concerning the genesis of his compositions and how their critical reception affected him. The authors consulted a number of people who knew Rachmaninoff, who worked with him, and who corresponded with him. Even with the availability of such sources and full access to the Rachmaninoff Archive at the Library of Congress, Bertensson and Leyda were tireless in their pursuit of privately held documents, particularly correspondence. The wonderfully engaging product of their labors masterfully incorporates primary materials into the narrative. Almost half a century after it first appeared, this volume remains essential reading. Sergei Bertensson, who knew Rachmaninoff, published other works on music and film, often with a documentary emphasis.

This study is the first to consider all three of Rachmaninoff's careers in detail. After surveying his place in Russian musical history and his creative activity, the author examines, with musical examples, each working chronological order against the background of the composer's life. Among the the many subjects upon which new light is shed are the operas, the songs, and the religious music. Rachmaninoff's remarkable career as a pianist, his style of playing and repertoire are analysed along with his historically important contribution to the gramophone and his work for the reproducing piano. The book includes a survey of his activity as a conductor. There are extensive references to Russian sources and the first appearance of a complete Rachmaninoff disconography is included. This book is the only comprehensive study in any language of the three aspects of Rachmaninoff's musical career and is a stimulating read for music lovers everywhere.

An anthology of selected works by Rachmaninoff based on the first editions corrected by the composer and the versions found in the Complete Works of Rachmaninoff published in Russia since 1949. Includes Prelude in C# Minor, Op. 3, No. 2, Humoresque in G, Op. 10, No. 5 and many others.

with an air of alterity--sensed, exploited, bemoaned, reveled in, traded on, and defended against both from within and from without." The author's goal is to explore this assumption of otherness in an all-encompassing work that re-creates the cultural contexts of the folksong anthologies of the 1700s, the operas, symphonies, and ballets of the 1800s, the modernist masterpieces of the 1900s, and the hugely fraught but ambiguous products of the Soviet period. Taruskin begins by showing how enlightened aristocrats, reactionary romantics, and the theorists and victims of totalitarianism have variously fashioned their vision of Russian society in musical terms. He then examines how Russia as a whole shaped its identity in contrast to an "East" during the age of its imperialist expansion, and in contrast to two different musical "Wests," Germany and Italy, during the formative years of its national consciousness.

"The recordings made by Marc-Andre Hamelin in recent years have cast new light on an extraordinary group of composers - Alkan, Busoni, Feinberg, Godowsky, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, and Sorabji - whose works heralded a Golden Age of virtuosic writing for the piano." "The Eight, as author Robert Rimm has termed these composer-pianists, have much in common, traits shared in our own age with Marc-Andre Hamelin, their foremost interpreter. For all their evident differences of age, nationality, and philosophy, they each created music of unprecedented ingenuity - often complex and of immense scale - that stretched the limits of the piano's capabilities. And all were genuine virtuosos with the technical resources to play these demanding works in public." "The volume includes rare photographs and concludes with an extensive bibliography, listings of the complete solo piano works of The Eight, and discographies of their solo piano recordings. In exploring the art of those who knew their instrument both as composers and as pianists, this book serves, in the words of pianist Stephen Hough, "both as a fascinating, exhaustive study of the riches of the past and as a stimulating inspiration for the future.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved