Rachmaninoff: Vc & Pno Music [CD]

Rachmaninoff, considered by academics to be a late romantic, often draws on Baroque models: an eclecticism of languages. He experiences music as a memory of affection, and in few places, as here, his insatiable Faustian aspiration to 'stop the moment' reaches a similar intensity. Op. 19 breathes a sense of a return to life and the otherworldly cello calls shatter according to a principle of hallucinatory suspensionwhich is already the Rachmaninoff of the Symphonic Dances op. 45. Piano Sonata No. 2in E-flat minor Op. 36 had a complex gestation, culminating in a 1931 revision in which the Maestro reduced a certain 'pleasant storytelling' in the style of Liszt, moving closer to the neoclassical matrix, but 'Russian-style', of his later works. As an ideal encore, the programme also features the Danse orientale Op. 2 No. 2, the adolescent Sergei's homage to that narrative of exotic landscapes, musical scales infused with chromatic enchantments.