Twenty-five years later Rachmaninov revised the concerto extensively, so what sounds in places like a cousin of Scriabin's Piano Concerto or those of Scharwenka also sounds like mature Rachmaninov as well. 1 in F sharp minor was written very early in the composer's career indeed, he was just 18 years old. Each movement is superbly built, and Chandos's recording is truly impressive although in the excerpts from Chausson's incidental music for The Tempest, the sound is perhaps a little bulky.Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no. This is the finest modern recording of the Symphony now available. There are none of Franck's organ-loft sonorities anywhere in this wonderfully variegated, open-air orchestration. The Symphony, like Franck's, is cyclical, but not otherwise as indebted to the older composer as is often suggested. The programme as a whole, the overall richness of the orchestral process – whether Wagnerian, Franckian, Straussian or Chaussonian – is well served by the full-bodied sound of Tortelier's BBC Philharmonic. Never entirely perhaps, but by the time the 43-year-old composer came to write his last orchestral piece, the nocturnal Soir de fête included here, his escape from Wagner was well under way, and who knows where it might have led, had it not been for his tragically early death the following year? The outer sections of Soir defête have something about them of 'the vibrating, dancing rhythms of the atmosphere' of Debussy's later Fêtes. The second, which the disc doesn't dispel quite so well, is that in his orchestral writing never managed to free itself from Wagner's embrace. The first, which this disc dispels admirably, is that the majority of Chausson's music, in the manner of his Poème, is endlessly melancholic or elegiac. There are at least two misconceptions to put right about Franck's arguably most gifted pupil.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |