Four Preludes

Prelude in G major Op 32 No 5

Including the early and notoriously popular Prelude in C sharp minor - which the composer didn’t dislike half as much as he said he did - Rachmaninov wrote twenty-four preludes in all the keys, just as Chopin had done before him and Bach before that. The Ten Preludes, Op.23 were completed in 1903, two years after the Second Piano Concerto in C minor, and the Thirteen Preludes, Op.32, followed in 1910, a year after the Third Piano Concerto in D minor. Owing less to Chopin’s Preludes than his Etudes (above all the “Revolutionary” Op 10 No 12), the Prelude in B flat Op 23 No 2 tolls a heroic peal of bells in the right hand over rolling arpeggios in the left and neatly reverses the roles of the two hands in the contrastingly expressive middle section. The Prelude in B flat was one of the composer’s own favourites, as the was the exquisitely melodious and poetically scored Prelude in G Op 32 No 5, which he liked to present as an encore to the Third Piano Concerto.

in B minor, Op.32, No.10

in G sharp minor, Op.32, No.12

in G minor, Op.23, No.5

in B flat major, Op.23, No.2

Including the early and notoriously popular Prelude in C sharp minor - which the composer didn’t dislike half as much as he said he did - Rachmaninov wrote twenty-four preludes in all the keys, just as Chopin had done before him and Bach before that. The Ten Preludes, Op.23 were completed in 1903, two years after the Second Piano Concerto in C minor, and the Thirteen Preludes, Op.32, followed in 1910, a year after the Third Piano Concerto in D minor.

Inspired by Böcklin’s painting The Return, the Prelude in B minor, Op.32, No.10, is a tragic conception with appealingly poetic outer sections and a most strenuously orchestrated middle section. The G sharp minor Prelude, Op.32, No.12, sounds as though it too might be a response to an external stimulus: it could almost be an alternative characterisation of the amorous water nymph, Ondine, in Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, projecting her voice against watery figuration at the beginning and disappearing in the spray at the end. The two Preludes from earlier set are among the most popular of them all - the G minor march of Op.23, No.5, its heroism inspired to some extent by Chopin’s polonaises, its lyrical middle section as personal as anything Rachmaninov ever wrote. The B flat maajor Prelude, Op.23, No.2, is a brilliant demonstration of what a great composer can do with a fanfare and a peal of bells.