Suite No.1

Suite No.2 (Fantaisie-tableaux) for 2 pianos Op.5 (1893)

Barcarolle: allegretto

La nuit, l’amour: adagio sostenuto

Les Larmes: largo di molto

Pâques: allegro maestoso

Rachmaninov wrote three works specifically and exclusively for two pianos, a Russian Rhapsody and two Suites, all of them completed between 1891 and 1901. If the Second Suite is the most idiomatically written of the three, in that the two pianos are fully integrated as equal chamber-music partners, the First Suite is the most seductive. The characteristic texture of the First Suite (originally called Fantaisie-tableaux) is a case of one piano suppling a decorative, even picturesque accompaniment to the other - which is entirely appropriate to a work which acknowledges the poetic inspiraton behind it by quoting lines from a favourite poet above each piece. The decorative element of the highly melodious Barcarolle is an impressionistic evocation of Lermontov’s “waves lapping beneath the gondola’s oar” and that of La Nuit, l’Amour a voluptuous echo of Byron’s “nightingale’s high note.” The other two pieces are based on bell sounds. Les Larmes responds somewhat obliquely to Tyutchev’s “tears that pour forth beyod telling” by recalling the four notes of St Sofia’s Cathedral in Novgorod, while Pâques corresponds directly with Khomyakov’s “Across the earth a mighty peal is sweeping” with a Russian Easter festival celebration that out-chimes Rimsky-Korsakov and anticipates Stravinsky in its acoustic audacity.