What Rachmaninoff Did for Russian Music
Sergei Rachmaninoff is remembered for the Paganini rhapsody, the two middle concertos, a prelude in C-sharp minor, and sometimes, a vocalise. The portrait painted by this “Best Of” compilation is of a man who procured steadfast melodies and unrelenting sentimentality till the day he died. Beyond these works too, you won’t find much that deviates from this pattern. Relatively speaking, he didn’t have eras or periods of stylistic evolution like, say, Stravinsky....