Sometimes when you hear a work for the very first time, and it turns out to be something greater you literally are struck with such awe that it almost feels like everything could be literally stopping dead except for the sounds rushing through your head. It may seem a little extreme, melodramatic and such but if the power of music was anything less, it wouldn't be as effective.

Rachmaninoff is often a composer I feel this way about. More so with his solo piano works, and especially the two collections of Preludes Op.23 and Op.32. I have posted many times on these two collections with my favorites, and as I continue to explore these works, the list of favorites will obviously continue.



Last night, I discovered another one of those pieces in a recording which features both complete sets of Preludes done by Boris Berezovsky. In addition to the ones I normally listen to, I decided to listen to the entire collection and stumbled upon the final one, the Prelude No.13 in D-flat Major, Op.32.


Lillya Zilberstein performs

In a previous post I mentioned how I thought the No.10 of the Op.32 collection was the most dramatic and now I realize I may have to at least change that response into believing that it may not be the most powerful out of the entire collection. The No.10 B minor prelude is a very compelling work but I think that in terms of complexity of what to do with all the potential sounds, the thirteenth presents a greater challenge.

To speak about emotional capabilities heralded within both is as subjective as asking the perfect chord besides tonic. Both preludes hint at a solid tone of sorrow but the thirteenth addresses this one in a much more illicit manner and ends much more heroically than the b minor prelude. However we all gauge musical attractiveness and emotion differently, and to tie this to a composer like Rachmaninoff could be classified as insanity.

So all of us will remember for the rest of our lives what happened seven years ago today, it's undeniable the effects it has had on all of our lives, if only in the slightest manner.

Caution heeds all forward momentum, so as we remember what happened on that day it is as equally important to remember what has happened in between and hope that something for the better had brought the world back into a serene light.



Hope is a tragic word to use today. Connecting itself to a possible future that could be great but also reflecting on what we live in today, the present. Music is in a similar tragic effect. Each sound is created out of nothing with the hope its existence will bring a "relaxing" effect only to have it die out in correlation with a new sound forming. It is a strong experience to reflect on the present sound but to realize what it used to be and that it eventually ends, reflects a constant paradox in the existence of anything.



In 2004, A BBC poll for the program Today revealed that Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, Op.11 was viewed as the saddest piece of classical music ever written. It is a rather simple work but undergoes a vast array of transformations, including expansion and inversion and several variations of the principal melody as if shifts through each instrument in the stringed orchestra.

On September 15, 2001 the Adagio was performed in London during the Last Night of the Proms concert at Royal Albert Hall. Leonard Slatkin, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 2000-2004, also an American conductor, gave his first Last Night concert just days after the 9/11 attacks. It was a more restrained than normal concert which also featured Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in replacement of the traditional Fantasia on British Sea Songs, by Henry Wood.

The first post of the September Performer series brings one of my favorite Schubert works to one of my favorite pianists. I know I said that about Gulda and the Mozart concerto, but when your favorite piece gets life from a great performer it is quite an experience.

Mitsuko Uchida performs, Franz Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor, D.537 (Op.164, post-humous)

1. Allegro non troppo


2. Allegretto quasi Andantino


3.Allegro vivace


The recording provided above also features the the A major sonata D.667 and two smaller pieces the Twelve German Dances D.790 and the Six German Dances D.820. It is also a rare find to purchase in Canada.

The featured recording for this month is featured on the right under Recording Essentials (obviously) and for September is Uchida's 2005 recording of the complete solo piano works by Schubert.