One comes to the works
of Sergei Rachmaninov slowly, and usually after repeated
hearings. Up until a few months ago, I had never heard the first
piano sonata of Rachmaninov, a sprawling work extending over some 35
minutes for its three movements. I came across it first played by the
immensely talented Xiayin Wang, then again played by the
immensely talented Zlata Chochieva on
her début recording CD. Both young women play it superbly and
fearlessly and I have now listened to the work some six times and
have come to love it – in the end, once Rachmaninov's fragile
themes had embedded themselves in my consciousness.
Written in 1907,
Rachmaninov himself seems to have subsequently neglected the work. Of
the two young women, I prefer the Chinese in this work; Xiayin Wang
is a superb Rachmaninov pianist who seems to have a real empathy for the composer. She has better dynamic shading here
than the young Russian – viz the very opening of the work –
and is better at differentiating the various harmonic and thematic
strands. The Russian is slightly faster in all three movements, but
the Chinese has a kind of relaxed virtuosity that seems to me to fit
this music that must be extremely difficult to play. This is now a
work that has firmly entered my (listening) repertoire.
No comments:
Post a Comment