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"Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 1873-1943"
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Rachmaninoff's Complete Songs
Sergei Rachmaninoff-the last great Russian romantic and arguably the finest pianist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries-wrote 83 songs, which are performed and beloved throughout the world. Like German Lieder and French mélodies, the songs were composed for one singer, accompanied by a piano. In this complete collection, Richard D. Sylvester provides English translations of the songs, along with accurate transliterations of the original texts and detailed commentary. Since Rachmaninoff viewed these \"romances\" primarily as performances and painstakingly annotated the scores, this volume will be especially valuable for students, scholars, and practitioners of voice and piano.
eBook
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Drawing extensively on Russian-language sources, a concise yet comprehensive survey of the life and work of one of classical music's great composers. Unquestionably one of the most popular composers of classical music, Sergei Rachmaninoff has not always been so admired by critics. Detractors have long perceived Rachmaninoff as part of an outdated Romantic tradition from a bygone Russian world, aloof from the modernist experimentation of more innovative contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky. In this new assessment, Rebecca Mitchell resituates Rachmaninoff in the context of his time, bringing together the composer and his music within the remarkably dynamic era in which he lived and worked. Both in Russia and later in America, Rachmaninoff and his music were profoundly modern expressions of life in tune with an uncertain world. This concise yet comprehensive biography will interest general readers as well as those more familiar with this giant of Russian classical music.
eBook
NEW WORK BY ROBERT MATTHEW-WALKER
Matthew-Walker offers information about his latest work: Concertante on a Theme of Paganini Opus 168, for piano and double string orchestra. The new work has had a long and labyrinthine gestation; it began as a gesture for Cyril Smith, whose recording of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini is the finest ever to have been captured for the gramophone, second only to Rachmaninoff's own. After Smith's tragic stroke in 1956, he wanted to write something for him, for the right hand alone, and began jotting down a few ideas - based on that well-known Paganini A minor Caprice - but although his teenaged notion was well-intended, it would have meant nothing at the time. Nonetheless, he felt he had one or two good ideas, which stayed with him and which he began to expand later into a new work for piano, strings and percussion. He had shown the unfinished manuscript to Robert Simpson who asked if he would be able to play it himself and, if so, he would arrange a performance conducted by Bryan Fairfax with the Polyphonia Orchestra.
Journal Article
Performing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil
[...]in the newly renamed Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg), as part of the Communists' vicious war on the Russian Orthodox Church, the Bolshevik cultural commissars frequently banned the public performance of sacred music; after 1923, the All-Night Vigil was still performed, but only in \"closed\" concerts for the Communist Party elites.'1 Upon the Kapella's return from their highly successful European tour, they were compelled to withdraw the work from their repertoire until 1982. To this end we reached out to several of the performers-three conductors and four professional singers-who have been involved in some of the most acclaimed performances and recordings mentioned above, asking them about their experience with Rachmaninoff's masterpiece. Steven Fox: After returning from a foreign language program (FSP) in my sophomore year at Dartmouth College, I wanted to plan two concerts that captured the memory of the great music that I had heard while living in St. Petersburg. In 2012, Trinity Church Wall Street in NYC invited Clarion to perform a Russian Christmas program as part of their Twelfth Night Festival.
Journal Article
Rheumatic and musculoskeletal disorders in musicians: risks, adaptations and management
Music therapy is recognised as a complementary or alternative therapy for osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia, but playing music can have health repercussions for musicians in the field of rheumatology.Limited articles exist on artists developing rheumatic diseases before 1900, possibly due to underestimation, poor understanding or a lack of awareness. Conditions like Marfan syndrome may confer hypermobility-enhancing virtuosity, as seen in Paganini and Rachmaninov.Among contemporary musicians, Edith Piaf, Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez and Céline Dion suffered from rheumatic diseases, and it was true obstacles for their careers.Repetitive movements, inadequate posture and instrument-specific physical demands contribute to musculoskeletal disorders in musicians, particularly tendinopathies and entrapment syndromes affecting the upper limbs. These conditions result in chronic pain, reduced mobility and performance decline. String and wind instrument players face heightened vulnerability due to the unique constraints of their instruments.Given the longevity of musical careers compared with athletic ones, specialised medical management and targeted prevention strategies are crucial. Minimising the impact of these conditions is paramount to ensuring musicians can maintain optimal performance and extend their careers under the best possible conditions, enabling a preventive approach, follow-up and specialised care for as long as needed. Therefore, further exploration of rheumatic diseases in musicians is warranted, particularly with an emphasis on the evolution of medical knowledge and clinical practices. These pathologies are complex and require specific treatment. Some European health professionals and musicians are training in the practice of ‘arts medicine’.
Journal Article
Repertoire & Resources
Sharing my cultural heritage, the essence of the Bulgarian soul expressed in song, is the story of my life. [...]the forum in Spain was a noteworthy opportunity for me as a pianist, singer, educator, and music historian with interests in ethnomusicology to feature my research, and further my knowledge in the field. [...]here I am, the curious world traveler, sitting in my midwestern American home, planning my new season of choral programs.
Journal Article
The Loosening of Closure
This article contributes to the study of late Romantic form by exploring Sergei Rachmaninoff’s songs with a focus on their final cadences. Building on William Caplin’s work—namely, his theory of the Classical cadence and the idea of tight-knit versus loose-knit structures—I examine an apparent ambiguity or even lack of cadential articulation in many of the songs. When viewed against a set of established tonal conventions, specific ways in which Rachmaninoff destabilizes his cadences include: (1) a final (work-concluding) imperfect authentic cadence (IAC) that replaces the more standard perfect authentic cadence (PAC); (2) the disguised cadence, in which a traditional cadential progression (such as V–I) recedes to a middleground harmonic level; and (3) the fluid cadence, in which a recognizable cadential progression has ambiguous closural function. Along the way, I adapt the theory of formal functions to the late Romantic tonal style of Rachmaninoff and introduce the concept of functional completeness and incompleteness, correlative with Caplin’s distinction between tight-knit and loose formal organization respectively.
Journal Article
Proto-Harmony and the Problem of Tonal Centricity in Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil
This article explores the Russian concept of proto-harmony (pragarmoniia) from both a theoretical and an analytical angle. Proto-harmony was introduced by Andrei Miasoedov (1998) as a group of four diatonically related triads that does not require an overarching tonal center, and that (according to him) serves as the tonal basis of much Russian music. In the first, theoretical section, I offer my own approach to proto-harmony that allows for greater theoretical and analytical precision and that engages in a dialogue with other, non-Russian approaches such as Neo-Riemannian and set theories. I introduce the notion of the proto-harmonic complex (PH complex) and show that it belongs to a family of similar diatonic groups explored by Western scholars, including \"component keys,\" \"Axis progression,\" \"double-agent complex,\" and paired relative keys (or Russian \"mutability\"). In the second, analytical section, I show that, in movements 1 and 14 from Sergei Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil (1915), a proto-harmonic complex explains large-scale non-monotonal structures by controlling important formal boundaries. Proto-harmony thus interacts with the decentralization of entire pieces that defy a conventional tonal explanation in either harmonic-functional or Schenkerian terms.
Journal Article