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Unsung Rachmaninovian Piano Concertos

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Author Topic: Unsung Rachmaninovian Piano Concertos  (Read 2948 times)
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Neil McGowan
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« on: October 06, 2012, 10:53:40 pm »

Thanks for your recommendations, Neil :). To answer your query, I am looking for works in the general style of Rachmaninov, not in any specific style of one of his works. Where have you heard Finnissy's PC 2? I thought Finnissy was a rather avant-garde composer, as far away from Rachmaninov as you could get, but maybe I'm wrong...

I, err, programmed it in a music festival I work with :) It was performed - somewhat at his own prompting, I might add - by British pianist Jonathan Powell, with the Vremena Goda Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Vladislav Bulakhov (Russian premiere), at the Moscow Conservatoire in November last year (2011).  (The link in the creative process here is Viktor Bunin - who was not only the soloist in the Golubev all those years ago, but was sitting last November in the front row for his protege Powell's performance of the Finnissy. Belova, too, was in the audience).

Finnissy is certainly an unabashedly modern composer, yet he has an abiding love and respect for music of other eras, which often provides the 'launch pad' for his own work. For example - as a rather formidable pianist himself - he's written many 'piano variations' in the great C19th tradition of such works - such as Liszt's many examples of 'concert paraphrases' of opera works. Finnissy's sets include two different sets of concert paraphrases of George Gershwin songs (which are more-or-less recognisable as Gershwin), a set of paraphases of Verdi Opera numbers (which are clearly inspired by the operas, but perhaps not immediately recognisable in their new and rather extreme paraphrases), and some more based on Rossini.  There are also some based on William Billings, but I've never heard or seen them.

Very worthwhile music indeed, although not intended to be 'easy'. I was very pleased that we got such strong support from the Conservatoire for the programme, and we received a lot of warm comments after the performance - from an audience who don't hear modern British music from one year to the next (unless, ehem, we've programmed it).  The orchestra has a strong commitment to 'doing new stuff', and actively commissions new work - in fact Belova's 'Checkmate' was another piece first performed by our orchestra, while on tour in St Petersburg a few years ago.

By way of balance, I ought to mention that the rest of the 'English' program we did included some arias by Mozart's billiards-partner Stephen Storace (which I edited for the occasion), and Elgar's 'Sospiri', and some C17th incidental music by William Brade - a Brit who worked almost exclusively in Germany. Quite a mixed bag, overall :)
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