Prelude in C minor, Op.23, No.7

Etude-Tableau in E flat minor, Op.39, No.5

Including the early Prelude in C sharp minor - which the composer regretted more and more as it became more and more popular - Rachmaninov wrote 24 preludes in all the keys, just as Chopin had done before him and Bach before that. The series was completed by the Thirteen Preludes, Op.32, in 1910, a year after the Third Piano Concerto in D minor. The Ten Preludes, Op.23 were written between 1901 and 1903, round about the same time as the Second Piano Concerto in C minor - a key which inspired in the seventh Prelude in that set a similar kind of tragic intensity. The Etudes-Tableaux, which were published in two sets, Op.33 in 1911 and Op.39 in 1917, are generally longer and more thoughtful than the Preludes. The Etude-Tableau in E flat minor, Op.39, No.5, is to begin with no less dramatic than the Prelude in C minor and no less vehement in expression. But, whereas the Prelude utters its protest in one sustained breath and one kind of figuration, the Etude-tableau digresses both in its harmony and in its imagery and finds some kind of reconciliation at the end.

Prelude in C major, Op.32, No.1: allegro vivace

Prelude in G major, Op.32, No.5: moderato

Prelude in C minor, Op.23, No.7: allegro

Although Rachmaninov’s preludes were less systematically assembled than Chopin’s or Scriabin’s, he did in the end write one in each of the twenty-four major and minor keys. Beginning with the youthful shocker in C sharp minor, Op.3, No.2, in 1892, he added the Ten Preludes, Op.23, in 1903 and completed the series seven years later with the Thirteen Preludes, Op.32. They are not, however, arranged in a pre-ordained sequence of tonalities, as Chopin’s Op.28 and Scriabin’s Op.11 are. They also resist formal categorisation in that they are so variable in length and - since they written at three significantly different periods in the composer’s development - so diverse in style and character. The difference between the Op.23 set and the Op.32 set is roughly equivalent to that between the Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18, and the Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op. 30.

The source of inspiration in the Op.32 set was less often an emotional state, important though that element still was, than a brilliant technical idea. In No.1 in C major, the shortest and one of the most energetic of all the twenty-four preludes, surging left-hand arpeggios constantly hit upon an alien A flat or B flat and deflect the harmonies in impulsive tangents away from the key centre. The poignancy of the purely lyrical No.5 in G major, though it obviously has much to do with its expressive melodic line, derives in part from the elaborate rhythmic contradictions contained in the two hands and from a decorative style somewhere between baroque and birdsong.

The Prelude No.7 in C minor from the Op.23 set, on the other hand, is an emotionally powered projectile from the Piano Concerto in the same key. Fragments of melody form against an unceasing torrent of semiquavers, chiming high in the right hand at first and then tolling in heavy octaves low in the left. The final appeasement is as effective as it is unexpected.