Recording
- Lilacs, Op. 21 No. 5 (composer’s piano transcription)Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano · 27 December 19232:33
Rachmaninoff plays his own piano transcription of Lilacs, Op. 21 No. 5, a song about a search for happiness among flowers. The melody sits inside the right hand’s running figuration, with short cadenzas added around it.
Listening notes · joins
- Opening, melody in the right hand
Two quiet bars of triplets come first, and then the melody enters beneath them. The right hand plays both, with the thumb taking the melody while the upper fingers continue the triplets. The left hand joins with widely spaced broken chords in A♭ major.
- Beketova’s poem and the 1913 transcription
In 1902 Rachmaninoff set Ekaterina Beketova’s poem about lilacs and the search for happiness. In 1913 he arranged the song for solo piano. He added cadenzas and a coda around the melody, which is built from a three-note phrase.
- Trill under a fermata
The repeated right-hand figures quicken and grow louder, then stop on a trill under a fermata. The bass holds its chord while the trill makes a diminuendo. A rising flourish ends the pause, and the melody continues più mosso, more quickly.
- Closing page
On the closing page the melody passes between the hands beneath high, quick notes. A final run marked veloce rises and falls across the keyboard. The accompaniment continues a little longer, then stops on an A♭ major chord.
Joins
- Trill and fermata before più mosso
The right hand accelerates over a held left-hand chord and reaches a trill, marked f, under a fermata. The trill fades in a diminuendo, and a rising run leads into più mosso. The left hand holds its chord through the pause and the restart of the melody.
- One bar of 4/4, then 3/4
The quiet a tempo passage reaches a double bar, followed by a single bar of common time. The right hand moves up into the top octave, marked 8va, and the metre then returns to 3/4. At mf the melody crosses between the hands beneath running semiquavers.