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Here’s a fine conspectus of the Russian choral tradition; its ancient hymns and offices, given new and rich harmonic robes by great Russian composers, and sung by ensembles who have this music in their blood, as indeed they must if its peculiar timbres are to make their haunting effect upon the listener. Clouds of incense swirl around our listening room as we are transported back centuries – whether two or ten – to a style of worship in which beauty is offered to God as an end in itself.

28 CD + CD-ROM

About this release Here is the most complete collection of Rachmaninoff 's output ever assembled on disc: from the piano concertos and preludes of worldwide affection and esteem to his many songs and three operas, which are far less known but reveal the heart and soul of their creator, as a Russian first and foremost, whose attachment to his mother country never diminished in decades of homesick exile.

The performers on this set are drawn from both sides of that divide: Earl Wild plays the piano concertos, while the equally maverick conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky masterminds the symphonies. The Borodin Trio plays the two impassioned piano trios, while another American virtuoso, Garrick Ohlsson, tackles the many transcriptions that the composer made of Chopin, Bach and others, with the major piano works (the sonatas, preludes and Études-tableaux) played by Santiago Rodriguez and Nikolai Lugansky. There are also new recordings of early piano pieces made especially for this set and not previously released. The set is completed by an extended introduction to the composer and his work by the Rachmaninoff authority Julian Haylock on a bonus CD-ROM.

Sergey Rachmaninoff was the ultimate romantic composer. Being a pianist himself he had a special affinity with the piano. Listen to his 4 piano concertos, the Paganini Rhapsody and two Études tableaux. Also on these CD’s the Vespers, The Isle of the dead, the Bells, and several other orchestral works.

Recording made by Chandos in 2003.

Booklet essay and synopsis.

‘Valery Polyansky here is at his most punchy and committed. Unexpurgated, this tale of monetary obsession makes disturbing listening.’ Gramophone

Rachmaninoff ’s relationship with the opera house is an interesting one. As early as 1888 he sketched out an operatic project called Esmerelda, based on Victor Hugo’s poem Notre Dame de Paris. He also composed two insertion arias for Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov – an old tradition that went back 200 years or so, with Mozart being a prime example of a composer who added arias of his own composition to the operas of colleagues. The first completed opera was The Miserly Knight, to Rachmaninoff ’s own libretto, based very closely on a Pushkin poem. It is in one act, as indeed are his other two operas, Aleko and Francesca da Rimini. At the time of completing his first opera, Rachmaninoff had just emerged from a season of conducting opera at the Bolshoi, and had also visited Bayreuth where he saw Der Ring, Parsifal and Der fliegende Holländer. Wagner’s music dramas left a huge impression on him, and The Miserly Knight reflects the influence of the German composer: no arias, leitmotif, and through-composed. As there are no ensemble numbers, the orchestra’s role is very important in this work, and like Mussorgsky and Wagner, Rachmaninoff uses monologues which are almost sprechgesang in places. The Miserly Knight is a rarity in the opera house as it is a short work, but it has been revived recently at Glyndebourne, and it has all the hallmarks of Rachmaninoff ’s other music, especially The Isle of the Dead and the Second Symphony.

Rachmaninoff was not a great churchgoer, and in fact had stopped going completely by the time he composed his Vespers, and his other great a cappella work, the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom op.31. Nevertheless, he retained a love for and interest in the ecclesiastical chant, and perhaps the most famous of these, the Dies irae, appears in his First Symphony and the late Symphonic Dances of 1940.

Rachmaninoff, like his great predecessor Tchaikovsky, was very critical of his own music, but he considered the Vespers and his choral symphony The Bells among his favourites. The Vespers had to wait until 1965 for the first recording due to the Soviet anti-religion stance. Even then it was released for export only. Russian Orthodox Church music never fails to move and stir the emotions, whether one is religious or not. Rachmaninoff ’s Vespers, like many of his most popular works, does not disappoint in its emotional impact and sincerity.

This set presents a great opportunity to become more familiar with the charismatic Russian conductor, Alexander Gauk. He was also a composer but is probably better known for his orchestral arrangements, notably of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Seasons’, included in this set.

Gauk also reconstructed the score of Rachmaninoff’s first piano concerto from the parts in 1945, thus enabling further performances after its disastrous première in 1897. He had a preference for Russian music which is shown here, eight out of the ten CDs being devoted exclusively to Russian composers.

Many of the most prominent Russian conductors of the twentieth century were once pupils of Alexander Gauk, for example, Evgeny Mravinsky and Evgeny Sveltanov. Gauk, who died in 1963, was one of those talented Russian musicians who rarely had the opportunity to experience the western lifestyle yet his fame did reach beyond his mother country.

Apart from featuring some of today’s better known symphonies by Shostakovich (Nos. 5 and 11) and the aforementioned ‘The Seasons’, the Gauk Edition comprises seldom performed works by Arensky, Balakirev (Islamey), Myaskovsky (Symphony No. 17) and Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov.