Rachmaninoff's op.23 preludes are spectacular, but in the op.32 preludes he outdoes himself: these are even more bewilderingly exploratory in harmony, even more in love with staggering contrasts, even more colourfully contrapuntal.
No.1 -- A dense, brooding firecracker that's built almost entirely around rising themes.
No.2 -- A cunning combination of siciliano rhythm with neo-Romantic harmony: two successive waves of accelaration don't quite manage to shake off the essentially resigned tone of this work.
No.3 -- A gorgeous little gem, which sounds like it might be from a lost Brandenburg Concerto.
No.4 -- A lovely exploration of contrasts: you have them in the opening motif itself, and then a languorous middle leads back into a storm of ecstatic violence.
No.5 -- Melting lyricism, and a surprisingly restrained harmonic palette. Like a tired afternoon on a hot summer day.
No.6 -- A restless, relentless, roiling thing, with passages occasionally slouching up from the coils of notes in the deep registers.
No.7 -- The closest Rachmaninoff comes to breezy cheerfulness in the set. A simple march rhythm is used to very original effect, in large part because of the harmonic wit Rachmaninoff displays here.
No.8 -- An implacably driven work, whose rhythmic refusal to waver stands in contrast with its willingness to indulge the listener with some truly beautiful harmonic shifts.
No.9 -- A luxuriant, deeply heartfelt prelude, whose essential lyricism is nonetheless built on swathes of dissonance that are so perfectly integrated into the pulsating rhythm you hardly hear them.
No.10 -- What must be the greatest of all the preludes, apparently based (if Moiseiwitsch is to be believed) on Böcklin's painting The Homecoming. The opening theme is gently modal, keening, and the middle session is a vast, reveberating soundscape of loss, of resolutions that are constantly being thundered toward and yet never quite found.
No.11 -- A charming little dance, showing that when he wanted to Rachmaninoff could write moving works of great simplicity: there is something somehow prayer-like and tender about this work.
No.12 -- A well-known encore piece, with coruscating figuration in the RH and a lovely chant-like melody in the LH (at least, to begin with): rain against a gray windowpane. The apparent climax at the center of the Prelude is not the actual focal point of the piece, which occurs during the final reprise of the opening theme.
No.13 -- A chorale that is by turns ecstatic, sad, violent, and transcendent. This blazingly intense work is full of clever references to the earlier preludes -- the siciliano rhythm that emerges harks back to No.2, and the faster sections use figuration essentially borrowed from No.8. The final pages feature some of Rachmaninoff's most daring use of counterpoint -- he often asks you to play a chord in root position, and *then* adds on a melodic (non-harmonic) note right above that chord. The challenges in voicing stuff like this effectively are truly vast.
Hayroudinoff, if you have not heard him already, is a stupendous Rachmaninoff player, with a beautifully open, narrative style, full of air and song -- a nice way to listen to a typically dense, intense composer.
Ashkenazy is crystal-clear, uncompromising, colourful, and prefers to accentuate Rachmaninoff's dramatic contrasts -- without any signs of melodrama or of becoming hysterical.
And at the end, performances from Volodos, Richter, Horowitz, and Rodriguez of particular preludes where I think they are especially compelling. Richter's No.10 must be one of greatest things ever put to record.
Hayroudinoff:
00:00 - No.1
01:11 - No.2
04:16 - No.3
06:37 - No.4
11:41 - No.5
14:59 - No.6
16:20 - No.7
18:39 - No.8
20:21 - No.9
23:31 - No.10
29:11 - No.11
31:52 - No.12
34:36 - No.13
Ashkenazy:
40:48 - No.1
42:04 - No.2
44:46 - No.3
47:12 - No.4
52:23 - No.5
55:41 - No.6
57:03 - No.7
59:12 - No.8
1:00:55 - No.9
1:03:45 - No.10
1:09:38 - No.11
1:11:41 - No.12
1:14:06 - No.13
1:19:56 - Volodos, No.5
1:22:47 - Richter, No.10
1:28:09 - Horowitz, No.12
1:30:45 - Rodriguez, No.13