Search - William Boyd :: Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos no 3 and 4 / Ashkenazy, Previn (Penguin Music Classics Series)

Amidst the 20th century's most disconcerting musical developments--12-tone rows, aleatoric compositions, Cage's musical chance--Sergei Rachmaninov's effusive piano works are downright comforting. Novelist William Boyd, who writes the liner note to this reissue, remarks similarly that upon revisiting Rachmaninov's piano works, he found them so familiar as to be a bit tiresome. But Boyd discovered in coming upon Rachmaninov's first three piano concertos that his "want to be exalted and to be made melancholy" is somehow keenly matched with the music. Andre Previn's piano certainly reassures that the long-honored traditions of grand form are in good stead, what with the lush strings alternating with his own outstanding, high-temperature passion in the Allegro ma non tanto and the blasting Finale of the third concerto. Virtuosity hangs all over this music, and since it is the music of one of the concerto's most demanding piano composers, there are more bright-light moments than can be easily enumerated. Previn's up to the Rachmaninov task, weaving and bolting through the orchestra. As Boyd remarks, this is easily music for either the musician or non-musician in that it pervades the senses while throwing neurotransmitters and emotions into high gear. --Andrew Bartlett