Piano music, from Op. 11

Program Note:

The Six Pieces, op. 11, of Sergei Rachmaninoff represent the piano four-hand genre tonight, a genre which includes great original contributions from Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, to name a few. The op. 11 set dates from the end of Rachmaninoff’s youth. Behind were the days of his glorious triumph in final exams at the Moscow Conservatory—walking off with the coveted gold medal in both piano and composition. Ahead lay the days of his mental breakdown following the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony and his struggle to regain compositional self assurance. The pieces here show the composer’s versatility and complete command of the keyboard—features evident already in Rachmaninoff’s early piano concerto, op. 1, and made more compelling in the contemporaneous Six Songs, op. 8, and “Elegiac” Piano Trio, op. 9.

(c) Jason Stell