Rachmaninov preludes recording

Back in August I recorded the complete Rachmaninov preludes and it was quite an amazing experience: I've never felt so free and uninhibited in a recording session. Strangely (or maybe not?) I was quite depressed the night after the final day of recording - I felt so strongly how much expressive possibility there is in this music and how impossible it is to really capture that on record. You have to choose between many wonderful options - if only you could have them all at once! So for the first time I saw an inherent sadness in recording: there is so much I want to say with these pieces and some of those things can't coexist in the same performance. To put it rather melodramatically, it's like having to choose which of your children you keep. Maybe if I had children I wouldn't dare to make such a connection, but I think it's common for musicians to have such a strong connection to music that it really feels a part of them, and so to reject some aspect of the music can feel like a betrayal.

All the editing is done now, and I'm relatively happy with the results. I can't ask for more: when I hear one of my CDs for the first time I always hope to be overwhelmed by the music as I was when I played it, but I think this really is impossible. I listen too analytically, and too aware of the possibilities in the music that I missed. Maybe some day I'll be able to listen as if it's someone else playing; then it would probably be much easier to be objective.


Here are the liner notes which I wrote for the CD. It comes out in May.

"Recently as I was exploring a book shop I saw the banner 'Tragic Life Stories' over an entire wall of books. I laughed, but I could have cried, and not in the way the authors presumably hope. What a bizarre phenomenon this is, the sudden emergence of a genre of writing which apparently delights in describing personal misery at its most heart-breaking.

"Why do I mention this? Well, I adore Rachmaninov's music - there are few composers who speak to me more directly. Yet I know a number of musicians, including some whose opinion I greatly respect, who think his music shallow, even cheap. I have a suspicion that for some of them, the music is a bit like one of these stories - not so much emotionally explicit as manipulative, calculated to draw the maximum sympathy from a credulous audience. (At least, this is what appears to underlie the famous entry in the 1954 Grove Dictionary which laments Rachmaninov's 'artifical and gushing tunes'.) It may be a tempting response to a composer whose music fit seamlessly into the classic film Brief Encounter, but the charge doesn't really stand up to scrutiny: listening to Rachmaninov's piano playing, one hears a clarity and emotional discretion which is the very antithesis of such sensationalism.

"I cannot dismiss all 'Rachmaninophobics' so easily, and there is an issue here which interest me: what does it mean for music to have depth? Compare Rachmaninov's music to Schubert's, and it seems to me clear that the latter contains much greater complexity of emotion. Schubert's late works in particular blend innocence, violence, sublime playfulness, humility, dread, and innumerable other emotions in the most potent fashion; as a result, there are very many ways of understanding his music depending on how one balances these conflicting elements. With Rachmaninov there is one element which dominates: a sense of melancholy to which his music returns again and again. Correspondingly, there is less ambiguity to the music. Does this make it less deep, less meaningful? I think the better response is to say it is less complex, because Rachmaninov expresses more profoundly than almost anyone else what it means to feel hopeless, to long for what is unattainable; the depth of feeling is, to me at least, unquestionable. This helps me make sense of the antipathy some have towards Rachmaninov's music. The more ambiguous a piece of music is, the more likely we will find personal meaning in it. If, however, we are directly confronted with a rather depressive musical world, it is understandable that some will find that threatening, self-indulgent, or else simply uninteresting.

"I am overstating the case to make my point. Rachmaninov's music can contain a wonderful variety of mood, as these preludes clearly show. Still, it is worth asking how many pieces here reflect a truly positive, outgoing frame of mind. Even the most sunny and ebullient, those in Bb, C, E and Ab major, all have their moments of inwardness, the last three of these ending with a kind of retreat into privacy. I think this is a telling instinct in music which is otherwise so open, suggesting that the pull of introversion was difficult for Rachmaninov to overcome.

"Tragic Life Stories notwithstanding, it is possible to write an account of a difficult life which transcends the details of abuse or neglect (as Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes triumphantly shows). I think there is a real sense in which Rachmaninov's music tells us such a story. It may be dominated by the pain and sadness of his life but it expresses much else besides, and when we reach the astonishing climax of the final prelude, I find it impossible not to be deeply moved that a man like Rachmaninov was capable of creating such a rich and life-affirming gesture."