Rachmaninov, Shostakovich & Denisov

Featuring

Victor Julien-Laferrière
Jonas Vitaud
Dmitri Shostakovich
Edison Denisov
Sergei Rachmaninoff

Did you know?

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Composer's Artistic Vision

Sergei Rachmaninoff, the composer of the Cello Sonata, once rhetorically asked, "Why should I compose for the violin when the cello exists?"

Critical Reception

A St. Petersburg critic once deemed Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata "harmful for the musical education of growing generations" due to its passionate emotionality.

Composer Biography

Edison Denisov, a composer featured on this album, was named after Thomas Edison by his physicist father and initially completed a mathematics degree before pursuing music.

Composer Biography

Edison Denisov's career as a composer was largely due to Dmitri Shostakovich, who took Denisov under his wing after receiving some of his early compositions.

Composition History

Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata marked his artistic resurrection after a deep depression caused by the disastrous 1897 premiere of his First Symphony, conducted by an intoxicated Alexander Glazunov.

Composition History

The Cello Sonata by Rachmaninoff is officially dedicated to cellist Anatoly Brandukov, who premiered it with the composer in 1901, and unofficially to Nikolai Dahl, the psychotherapist who treated Rachmaninoff.

Composer Biography

Edison Denisov was blacklisted by the Union of Soviet Composers for procuring and studying modern Western music by composers like Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.