Rachmaninoff in exile

Siloti took the Prelude on his 1898 tour of Europe, England and America, and its fame travelled ahead of Rachmaninoff, who was still living in Russia. The slow opening chords are followed by an Agitato in triplets, after which the three-note motif returns across the keyboard. At that point the score is written on four staves instead of two for the pianist’s two hands. A quiet coda follows, in which the chords move apart, and the piece ends softly.

Rachmaninoff wrote Lilacs in 1902 at Ivanovka, the Satin family’s estate near Tambov. In Ekaterina Beketova’s poem the speaker goes among the flowers in search of happiness. He later arranged the song as a piano piece, setting its melody among broken chords and triplets and adding short cadenzas. On 27 December 1923 he recorded that version for Victor in Camden, New Jersey. The piano part becomes quicker and fuller, pauses on a trill, then returns to the quiet melody. The final flourish adds a few more notes around the tune.

By 1910 twenty-three more preludes had followed the C♯ minor Prelude. The ten preludes of Op. 23 and the thirteen of Op. 32 completed Rachmaninoff’s set in all the major and minor keys. This is the B minor, played here by La Pianista in 2010. Marked Lento, it begins with small moving figures against held chords. The two hands move together in a rocking figure, then pause. The phrases gradually take on heavier chords, and the marking becomes pesante.

In December 1917 Rachmaninoff left Russia with his wife and two daughters. They travelled through Finland to Sweden, then settled in Copenhagen before sailing for New York in November 1918. He never saw Russia again. The B minor Prelude was already seven years old when they left. After its climax it continues with long notes surrounded by quick decoration. The opening phrases return quietly after the middle section. Near the end the bass descends and the spaces between the piano’s last sounds grow wider.

In America, Rachmaninoff worked full-time as a concert pianist. Recording became another part of that work. He recorded for Edison in 1919, signed a contract with Victor in 1920, and returned to the studio repeatedly with pieces he knew intimately. On 4 April 1928, in New York, he recorded the C♯ minor Prelude again, this time electrically. Victor issued take 23. The opening chords state the same three-note figure heard earlier, and the triplets accelerate towards the return of the opening material. The coda is quiet.

In the Second Concerto’s Adagio, muted strings introduce a melody for flute and clarinet above the piano’s moving notes. Rachmaninoff and Stokowski recorded this opening side in Philadelphia in 1929. Five years later, beside Lake Lucerne, Rachmaninoff was writing the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra. Villa Senar was his summer home from 1933 to 1939. There he wrote twenty-four variations on Paganini’s last Caprice and brought in another old tune, the Dies irae. In Variation VII the piano plays that chant against fragments of Paganini’s melody.

Rachmaninoff died at home in Beverly Hills in March 1943. Twenty years earlier, in Camden, he had recorded Lilacs. Victor’s books list twelve takes between 1920 and 1923; this is the ninth, recorded on 27 December 1923. The song’s melody passes through the moving notes, gathers into a trill and returns to a quiet close. A last short flourish leads to the closing chord.