Rachmaninov: 24 Preludes

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共24首歌曲

艺人: Steven Osborne
语种: 其他
厂牌: Hyperion Records
发行时间: 2009年05月01日
专辑类别: 录音室专辑

专辑介绍

‘A catalogue of revelations on how the Russian composer’s piano music should sound … one of the finest performances I’ve ever heard from the Scottish pianist—Osborne presented a textbook demonstration of clarity of thought and purpose … a philosophy which banished notions of Rachmaninov’s music as turgid, densely textured emotional upheaval in sonic form. This was so clear it had a rare purity, wholly refreshing the music in all its parts’ (The Glasgow Herald) ‘Textures that on the page look impossibly convoluted emerged wonderously clear, fluent and beauteous’ (Financial Times)

Steven Osborne’s live performances of Rachmaninov’s preludes were greeted ecstatically by critics and audience alike: a new benchmark for performances of these works, and a new departure for this most subtle and sensitive of pianists. Now Steven has committed the complete cycle to disc—a surprisingly rare recording venture in itself. His matchless musicianship has rarely been so blazingly evident as it is here. Also apparent is his deeply individual relationship with the repertoire. This is a disc to treasure.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the piano prelude was a firmly established genre, whether attached to a fugue in the Baroque manner (Mendelssohn, Liszt and Brahms) or more often free-standing, with the option of extending to a group of twenty-four in all the major and minor keys after the peerless model of Chopin’s Op 28 (Heller, Scriabin and Busoni, or the twenty-five of Alkan and César Cui). By common consent the prelude was a short, non-programmatic work, not conspicuously attached to dance idioms or any other predominant mood, and therefore allowing the performer and listener considerable latitude for interpretation. In function preludes could range from elegant calling cards for presenting at private soirées, all the way to barnstorming encores for prestigious recitals.

Rachmaninov’s twenty-four preludes are mainly of the latter type. They make optimal use of the full-size, industrial-strength concert grand, enabling it to fill all but the largest concert hall with an illusion of orchestral impact. Striking though their opening bars often are, many have reserves of textural amplitude that are gradually released, to breathtaking effect. Even the greatest virtuoso has to rise to their double challenges of athleticism and poetry, and they are equally well adapted to the gladiatorial arenas of conservatoire recitals and international competitions.

Where Scriabin’s twenty-four Preludes Op 11 are highly Chopinesque and hardly ever exceed two pages, Rachmaninov’s are equally indebted to Liszt and are generally at least twice as long; when Chopin comes to mind, it is as much the display element of his Studies as the intimacy of his Preludes that is recalled. And while the later Scriabin Preludes tend to be vaporous and mystical, Rachmaninov’s are almost entirely in the realms of emotional confession, exploring the poetics of heroic struggle and longing.

The C sharp minor Prelude sets out these qualities in terms that are hard to mistake. Composed in the autumn of 1892 by a proud recipient of the coveted Gold medal from his Moscow Conservatory graduation and of a publishing contract with the firm of Gutheil, this piece soon captured the imagination of audiences, especially in Britain and the USA. There it became a more or less compulsory feature—generally as an encore—of every Rachmaninov recital, from his London debut in 1899 until his last appearances in the year of his death. The reasons for its phenomenal popularity are not hard to find. Its Lisztian evocation of bells commands attention, while the pauses and layered textures give time for the ear to savour the overtone mixtures of superimposed chords. This gift for deriving maximum effect from minimum substance (a feature of Rachmaninov’s music that some early critics were quick to castigate) proved irresistible to audiences, many of whom found they could also recreate at least the basic effect on their own piano at home.

Rachmaninov had to live with the fact that he had taken a one-off fee for the C sharp minor Prelude, with no international copyright protection. So its countless arrangements and re-publications brought him no financial reward. Yet even when jazz versions began to appear, he could listen to them with enjoyment. And when a lady admirer sent him a postcard asking whether the piece was meant to describe ‘the agonies of a man having been nailed down in a coffin while still alive’, he chose not to disillusion her. Whatever associations the piece may have had for the composer, it would not be the quintessential Rachmaninov experience it is without the emotional tussle of its more lyrical middle section, cut off in its prime by the return of the ‘bells’, which thereby confirm their role as symbols of Fate.

Ten years on, Rachmaninov returned to the genre, once again in a mood of creative elation, having recently overcome two years of writers’ block to produce his Piano Concerto No 2. The harmonic and pianistic idiom of that work is strongly reflected in the collection of ten Preludes that make up his Op 23, composed between 1901 and 1903 (beginning with the famous G minor, No 5). If Rachmaninov needed emotional fuel for the soul-states explored in this set, he could have found it easily enough in his own past—in the joys of his privileged upbringing and especially the trauma of being twice uprooted from it (once thanks to the spendthrift habits of his father, then owing to failure in all his exams through laziness). The product of those elements was an intense nostalgia. At the same time, however, he had been building up one of the most formidable piano techniques of his day, thanks to the forcing-house regime of Nikolai Zverev and later the guidance of Rachmaninov’s cousin, the Liszt-pupil Alexander Siloti. And despite a certain reluctance to do his homework, he seems somehow to have acquired equally solid skills as a composer from his lessons with Sergei Taneyev, the greatest Russian master of counterpoint (as Tchaikovsky accurately described him). He was therefore able to fashion textures of maximal grandeur and opulence without resort to facile effect-mongering.

The opening Preludes of Op 23 establish three archetypes for the entire set. The sighing motifs of the slow F sharp minor, No 1, define a tone of melancholy introspection, while the florid arpeggios, indomitable chords and luxuriant final cascades of the fast B flat major, No 2, are redolent of a determination to master any adversity; No 3 in D minor, Tempo di minuetto, mediates between the extremes, its centre of gravity being a restrained neo-classicism that can shade into introversion or extroversion at will. The template established in these three opening Preludes is followed by the next four. No 4 is a Schumannesque song without words (compare the second of Schumann’s Romanzen Op 28), while the famous G minor Alla marcia frames melting lyricism with militant energy; the neo-Baroque phase then has to wait while the sighing lyrical E flat Prelude once again demonstrates Rachmaninov’s mastery of decorative accompaniment. When the maximalized Bachian toccata style of the C minor Prelude No 7 arrives, it does so as a tour de force. The last three Preludes in the Op 23 set are anything but anticlimactic. The A flat major No 8 sticks to its right-hand figuration as tenaciously, yet as resourcefully, as a Chopin Study, while the double notes of the Presto E flat minor are an earthier reincarnation of Liszt’s Feux follets (Will-o’-the-wisps) from the Transcendental Studies. Finally the slow G flat major avoids applause-orientated strategies and instead modestly closes the frame of the opus, reworking the sighs of the opening F sharp minor Prelude.

Unlike Chopin, Scriabin and even Shostakovich, Rachmaninov does not order his preludes systematically by keys. In fact it is not even clear precisely when he determined that he would complete a cycle of twenty-four, though he had evidently decided on that path when he came to compose the thirteen Preludes of his Op 32 in 1910. This was directly after his Piano Concerto No 3 (as before, there is a certain amount of overlap with the pianistic idiom of that work). Yet there are enough informal tonal relationships between consecutive Preludes—especially in the Op 32 collection, where eight of the preludes are paired by opposite modes—and enough variety in the succession of tempi and moods, to make performance of each set, or even of all twenty-four Preludes, as a unit a realistic option for any pianist intrepid enough to take it.

The C major finger-loosener often placed at the outset of such a cycle now appears as a launch-pad for the Op 32 Preludes. This one is not as ferociously sky-rocketing as its counterpart in Liszt’s Transcendentals, but it certainly issues a challenge, not least by proposing rising motifs as a counter-balance to Rachmaninov’s habitual dying falls. A neoclassical archetype not yet explored is the swaying siciliano rhythm, which now becomes the guiding thread through the B flat minor Prelude, No 2, a piece built on two waves of acceleration, neither of which succeeds in shaking off a fundamental melancholy or in avoiding a conclusion in a mood of stoical resignation.

The Allegro vivace E major Prelude does break free, however, in another neo-Bachian aerobic workout, almost like an updated solo version of a Brandenburg Concerto. There is even, perhaps, the ghost of gigue behind its shadowy successor, the E minor Prelude No 4, whose contrasting sigh figures are eventually given their due in a languorous central section. With the rocking motion and ecstatic, flowering melody of the G major No 5 we gain the first glimpse in the Op 32 set of consoling lyricism. At the opposite extreme, the turbulent F minor is full of wrathful passion. The nearest Rachmaninov comes to cheery playfulness in any of his Preludes is the almost genial F major, No 7. Pre-figuring the Étude-tableau from Op 39 in the same key, the A minor Prelude No 8 is implacably driven, as if with the wind at its back and the rain swirling round it. A further switch to the opposite mode for No 9 brings another luxuriant tapestry woven from the thread of a sighing motif. Then come two more siciliano-based pieces, the slow B minor Prelude, No 10, with its pulverizing contrasting section, and the faster, more restrained B major Prelude.

The G sharp minor Prelude, No 12, is the last favourite encore piece in the set, its harp-like figurations running like water down the window-panes of a Russian dacha. Finally the D flat major Prelude once again closes a frame, this time harking right back to the infamous C sharp minor of Op 3; it also has a certain summative quality, thanks to its inclusion of siciliano rhythms, sighing motifs, étude figurations, an accelerating middle section and a ringing chordal apotheosis. As if to trademark his piano idiom, Rachmaninov here concludes with a piece that demands a formidable hand-stretch, of the kind he almost uniquely possessed.

Rachmaninov: 24 Preludes

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