Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27

Although they have been intermittently available, Walter Weller's cycle of the three Rachmaninov Symphonies have hidden their blazing light under the Decca bushel for far too long. Recorded in absolutely thrilling Decca sound with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (No. 1) and the London Philharmonic Orchestra (Nos. 2 and 3), these three masterpieces are now collectively issued on Australian Eloquence.

Weller's view is at once trenchant and expansive. He is able to extract the last ounce of emotion from such symphonic-scapes as the slow movement of the Second - taken at a seemingly dangerously slow tempo, but which, with his unerring shaping of that popular movement, seems just right.

Grippingly emotional, these readings will now take their rightful place in recording history with such other great stereo recordings as those by Eugene Ormandy and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

The great Evgeny Svetlanov (1928–2002) was music director of the USSR State Orchestra (1965–2000) with permanent positions with the LSO, the Residentie Orchestra in the Hague and with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

He frequently guest conducted the NHK Orchestra in Japan and the Orchestre National in Paris, as well as the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. May 2012 marked the tenth anniversary of his death and ICA celebrated this with a coupling of Rachmaninov’s The Bells – from Svetlanov’s last concert – and Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, works by two composers who were very closely associated with the conductor.

Rachmaninov was, by his own account, Svetlanov’s favourite composer. This new live recording of his Symphony No.2 from the Royal Festival Hall in 1993 with the Philharmonia Orchestra has never been issued before.

The recording is in excellent stereo and Svetlanov was at his most exciting when caught live as opposed to working under studio conditions.

This is a riveting performance. To complete the CD is a rare live stereo recording of Svetlanov conducting Leonard Bernstein’s brilliant Candide Overture from the Edinburgh Festival in 1978. Svetlanov never recorded this in the studio and it appears here for the first time. ICA has received wonderful reviews for Svetlanov’s recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.1 and Stravinsky’s Firebird Ballet (ICAC5007), Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10 (ICAC5036) and most recently Rachmaninov’s The Bells and Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (ICAC5069).

This fervent, warm-hearted symphony was neglected for many years, but is now one of the most popular Russian orchestral works. Tadaaki Otaka is one of Japan’s leading conductors and became Principal Guest Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2010. Here he conducts the internationally acclaimed Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in an exciting live performance.

Continuing the series of recordings made in the superb acoustics of London’s Cadogan Hall.

The Symphony No.2 is one of Rachmaninov’s most romantic and popular works.

Coupled with the haunting Vocalise in an intimate version for cello and piano.

Rachmaninov drafted his Second Symphony in a charming garden villa in Dresden, where he had settled with family in late 1906; he told his friend Nikita Morozov in February 1907 of ‘a mood of anguish, apathy and disgust at what I’ve been doing in my work’. Rumours of a new symphony were true, he added, but he had put it aside for a while because it had become ‘terribly boring and repulsive’ to him. Once past the complex first movement, however, each of the remaining three came to life in a matter of weeks, and the work in toto is a worthy successor to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, as well as an intriguing example of a new cosmopolitanism in European orchestral work, no less than the Eastern influences being absorbed at the time by Mahler and Debussy.

The second movement can to our ears now sound like Bruckner meets John Williams; that kind of cinematic breadth has assured the slow movement and its famous clarinet tune of immortality and a special place even among the work of one of the most assured of last century’s melodists. Underneath, however, is that surging melancholy and longing for an elusive homeland that characterises all of Rachmaninov’s greatest music.

Valery Gergiev is a renowned master of such qualities, pre-eminent among modern Russian conductors and unrivalled in his commitment to Russian music old and new. This recording was made with ‘his’ orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg.

Under Gianandrea Noseda, the BBC Philharmonic’s epic Rachmaninoff series continues with a recording of Symphony No.2, coupled with The Rock.

Unlikely his First Symphony, Symphony No.2 is standard orchestral repertoire. A recent concert at the Bridgewater Hall, elicited the review, ‘Noseda showed his remarkable affinity with Rachmaninoff’s style. He combines an ability to sustain the long structures of its emotional climaxes with a vocalistic approach to phrasing which lifts the tunes out of the texture and lefts them sing. It’s almost operatic in its vividness.’ City Life.

The challenge of making his mark with that ultimate big statement, a symphony, still faced Rachmaninoff as he headed into his mid-thirties. Posterity now accepts that he had probably cracked a tough nut with his First Symphony (CHAN 10475). Yet the 1897 premiere, poorly conducted under disputed circumstances by Glazunov, was so unfavourably received that it forced Rachmaninoff into creative silence for the next three years. Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony was drafted alongside an equally ambitious Second Piano Sonata in a charming garden villa in Dresden, where the whole family had settled in late 1906. The finished product turned out to be one of the longest of all Russian symphonies. Breadth, though, is of the essence of the Second Symphony’s wealth of lovingly wrought and subtly interlinked thematic material. As one critic observed at the 1908 St Petersburg premiere, conducted with his usual first-rate flexibility by Rachmaninoff, ‘the new E minor Symphony… may be slightly over long for the general audience, but how fresh, how beautiful it is’.

The accomplished fantasia of 1893, The Rock offers an excellent example of Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestration as acknowledged by Rachmaninoff’s original dedication.