Recorded in August 2007 | Time 82:35 | Cover Painting by Aristarkh Lentulov
CD
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In the Etudes-Tableaux Op. 39, among the last pieces Rachmaninov wrote before he left Russia for good in 1917, one can sense the turbulent new era for his country reflected in the innovative stretching of the instrument’s limits, firmly placing the composer in the twentieth century.
September 2009
“Powerful and measured, Paterson-Olenich's playing allows every one of the composer's maelstrom of notes to tell, and the First Sonata's magnificent if sprawling edifice is lit by one revelation after another. …when you listen to the first movement development... and final pages given with such breadth and understanding you are hearing a pianist born for Rachmaninov. The Op 39 Etudes-tableaux, always among the composer's richest offerings, present the same moving force and involvement. ...throughout this entire programme you are made frighteningly aware of Rachmaninov's demons, of his confession that "sometimes I think someone will come down the chimney and murder me".”
Andrew McGregor
2nd October 2009
“there’s something inescapably Russian about the way he plays Rachmaninov; the free-flowing romanticism, the surging tempos, and the waves of colour that can be almost overwhelming in the First Sonata...with a sense of the essential Russian-ness of the music, the darkness and melancholy at the heart of so much of it, despite the glowing magnificence of the more extrovert pages.”
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