Rachmaninoff: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3; Isle of the Dead
6/30/2023, 10 Tracks, 2:03:23
Featuring
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Did you know?
1/7
Critical Reception
The Russian press ironically titled Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony 'Little Mother Russia's Collected World-Weariness in E minor'.
Composition History
Rachmaninoff reluctantly allowed conductors like Ormandy and Stokowski to cut his scores, fearing the works would otherwise disappear from concert halls.
Composition History
Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem Isle of the Dead was inspired by a black-and-white reproduction of Arnold Böcklin's painting of the same name.
Composition History
Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony was often performed with significant cuts, sometimes losing up to 300 bars of music, because of its monumental length.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Rachmaninoff considered composition 'as essential a part of my being as breathing or eating'.
Compositional Technique
Rachmaninoff frequently used the 'Dies irae' motif, a sequence from the Catholic Mass for the Dead, as part of his musical vocabulary.
Composer Biography
Rachmaninoff left Russia for Dresden with his family in 1906 to escape political and social unrest following the 1905 'revolution'.
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