Search - Valeri Polyansky :: Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 1, Etudes-tableaux

The great music teacher and composer Alexander Glazunov influenced several generations of Russian (then, Soviet) composers, and one of the most popular to emerge in the early years of the 20th century was Serge Rachmaninov. Nearly all of Rachmaninov's music bears Glazunov's distinctive stamp. This is particularly true in the youthful Symphony No. 1. Valeri Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony here capture the essence of Rachmaninov's Russian Romanticism (including a dab of Rimsky-Korsakov's Orientalism). Later Rachmaninov works veer away from Glazunov's influence, becoming a bit darker. Italian composer Ottorino Respighi transcribed five of these works for piano--Cinq Etudes-tableaux--into five small, Scriabinesque tone poems. Add to the mix the extraordinarily robust Chandos sound and you have an absolute winner. Don't pass this one by. --Paul Cook