Riccardo Chailly conducts Rachmaninoff with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Riccardo Chailly

As always, Maestro Chailly is full of surprises: former chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra now shines his light on works by a young Serge Rachmaninoff. We hear music by an energetic, talented composer and pianist who still had to earn his spurs. Rachmaninoff composed the Scherzo as a fourteen-year-old conservatory student. Four years later, he wrote the First Piano Concerto, in which the typical Rachmaninoff style already starts to emerge: the piano plays a heroic role, while melodies glow in the orchestra like Northern Lights in the arctic sky. With this work, the young Alexander Malofeev is making his Concertgebouw Orchestra debut.

Rachmaninoff

Not long after, Rachmaninoff wrote Utyos (‘The Rock’), an atmospheric ‘winter tale’ which made a big impression on his mentor Tchaikovsky. It’s rather a shame he didn’t write many more such colourful pieces. The music calls for a conductor who knows how to deliver drama in a perfectly measured way. Leave it to Riccardo Chailly! Rachmaninoff wrote the concluding Etudes-tableaux for piano, a work which the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, who held his work in such high esteem, orchestrated so flamboyantly that Rachmaninoff wrote to him in a telegram, ‘I could never do it like that.’