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Rachmaninov / Sandro Russo

Release Date: 03/17/2017
Label: Steinway & Sons Catalog #: 30077
Composer:  Sergei Rachmaninov Performer:  Sandro Russo

On Sandro Russo's debut album for Steinway & Sons, he showcases the multiple facets of Rachmaninov’s artistic language, from his monumental first sonata to his last original work for solo piano the Variations on a theme of Corelli.

Credits:
Recorded June 13 & 20, 2016 at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, New York.
Producers: Ryan Streber, Sandro Russo
Engineer: Ryan Streber

Executive Producers: Eric Feidner and Jon Feidner
Art Direction: Jackie Fugere
Design: Cover to Cover Design, Anilda Carrasquillo
Piano Technician: Dan Jessie
Piano: Steinway Model D (Hamburg) #498260


Reviews:
 The fine Steinway & Sons label has Read more attempted, in various ways, to re-create the pianistic world of a century ago, in which a recital of music by Rachmaninov would have been a common entry indeed. In his adopted United States, the recital might have been by the composer/pianist himself. Famous for his powerful hands, he is associated with sounds that could make the walls ring in a good-sized symphony hall, but the fact is that for an ordinary piano recital, which might often have taken place in a smaller space, more intimate approaches are reasonable. That's what you get in this enjoyable album by Sandro Russo. Russo chooses works that generally respond well to his elegant, rather refined treatment, starting off with the comparatively rare Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 28, with its general inspiration by Goethe's Faust and its inward atmosphere. Russo goes on with works that connect with each other in more or less subtle ways that he explains a short booklet note. Some of them are arrangements by Earl Wild of non-piano works (sample one of these for the flavor of the whole), and these make a lovely interlude before the final flourish. In general, Russo seems more concerned with shades than with pianistic fireworks, and he's one of a group of young pianists who have been finding these in Rachmaninov, and finding, in general, that he was more aware of Impressionist developments than he has been given credit for. You may wish for a bit more blood and thunder in the final Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42, but here too Russo's approach is original. Steinway & Sons departs from its usual concert venues for a studio recording here, and the results are superb. A recommended new take on Rachmaninov.

-- AllMusic Guide

The kind of hard hitting, committed piano player that arts councils should have been created for, this classical piano man tackles the Rachmaninov canon and doesn't stop at just the warhorse repertoire. Finding music where other piano players didn't bother to look, this is a technician and tactician that stands and delivers rather than searches and destroys giving the listener more than what he thinks he came for. A dazzling work that does more for détente than anything political can.

-- Midwest Record Entertainment

Russo has come my way before with Russian repertoire. He is an exciting, very talented pianist, born in Sicily but a resident of the US since 2000. Now the Steinway artist has his first disc on that top label. As expected, it is generously filled, with excellent piano sound and good program notes. I have discs with just the sonata and Corelli Variations, but here we get an additional seven pieces—25 minutes more music.

Sonata 1 is probably my favorite of Rachmaninoff’s large piano compositions. It opened the composer’s first solo piano recital at Carnegie Hall in 1909. Rarely heard 40 years ago, it is played and recorded much more often these days, but nowhere as often as Sonata 2. Without the benefit of a champion like Horowitz, and with a difficulty level comparable to Piano Concerto 3, this work requires a pianist with vast reserves of technique, power, and interpretive skill. Russo succeeds on all counts. He doesn’t knock Ogdon (RCA) from my top spot, primarily because of the flow and drive, which can start and stop here but is relentless with Ogdon. Of course, the 1968 RCA piano sound can’t compare with Steinway’s 2017 sound, and Russo has many beautiful and important things to say about this work.

The Corelli Variations are just as well played and recorded, but I do object to the 18 minute work as only one track.

In between the two big works, we are treated to three nicely contrasting Etudes-Tableaux: Op.33:3 in C minor and 33:6 and 39:5 in E-flat minor. The inclusion of four of Earl Wild’s brilliant song transcriptions makes this release even more irresistible. I have the greatest admiration for pianists who can play these murderously difficult arrangements. I know how hard the original accompaniments are; I have performed all four of the songs with a singer: ‘Dreams’, ‘Floods of Spring’, ‘The Little Island’ and ‘Here It Is Beautiful’. Wild adds extra verses, harmonic modulations, and tons of notes to the original; but everything he does is fully in keeping with Rachmaninoff’s style. I believe that the composer would have approved.

-- HARRINGTON, American Record Guide

A graduate of the Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory and the Royal College of Music in London, pianist Sandro Russo means “to showcase the multiple facets of [Rachmaninov’s] artistic language.” Russo (rec. 13 & 20 June 2016) addresses the imposing Piano Sonata No. 1 (1908), a piece inspired by both the Faust legend and the Liszt Faust Symphony, with its musical portraits of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles. In fact, the sketches for the d minor Sonata suggest Rachmaninov’s symphonic ambitions, though he would discard any program from the piece, as such. In three large, intricate movements, the sonata resonates with the ubiquitous Dies Irae of the Requiem Mass, especially given Rachmaninov’s gothic sensibility and his admiration of the Liszt Totentanz. Rachmaninov presented the draft of the work to colleague Konstantin Igumnov, who premiered the work.

Russo attacks the first movement Allegro moderato with pungent fervor, its Russian bells ringing and its folk idiom in lyrical bel canto. Russo builds an impressive, mounting arch that ripples with scales and huge block chords and repeated notes. The percussive aspects of the score may become too intrusive for some tastes. The element of longing detectable in this music might be attributed to Rachmaninov’s fascination with Byron’s Manfred, his having set the Tchaikovsky symphony for two pianos. The Lento casts a romantic glow rife with Schumann conceits, particularly the Romance in F-sharp Major, Op. 28, No. 2. The watery, singing line in broken figures might echo Scriabin and Rachmaninov’s own c minor Concerto.

The Allegro molto contains galloping figures that resonate with militant hauteur and a strong sense of the opening movement of the Chopin Second Sonata. This movement ends with a kind of epilogue, at first meditative in glossy arpeggios, reminiscent of Schumann’s Fantasie, Op. 17. Then, Rachmaninov’s thick stretti and polyphony take over, invoking those Russian bells in tandem with Beethoven’s “fate” motive. The character of the music – rather emotionally wrought – helps explains why this work has not yet held thrall over audiences, but Russo’s conviction of its merits – along with performances by the likes of Alexis Weissenberg – may overcome the collective coolness towards its power.

Russo’s set of three Etudes-Tableaux: in c minor, Op. 33, No. 3; in e-flat minor, Op. 33, No. 6; and in e-flat minor, Op. 39, No. 5 fill out his vision of the composer’s lachrymose sensibility that still embraces a tender poetry. “Six feet of gloom” had been Stravinsky’s assessment of the tall and lean Rachmaninov. Much pedal assists Russo’s enunciation of the Rachmaninov ethos, which occasionally resonates with an organ sonority that rivals Busoni’s notion of Bach. The Op. 33, No. 6 echoes aspects of Medtner, as a kind of fairy-tale etude-scherzo. The Op. 39, No. 5 projects that colossal (percussive) majesty we hear also in the b minor Prelude, with clear homage to Chopin.

Russo chooses four of American virtuoso Earl Wild’s transcriptions of Rachmaninov songs: “Dreams,” Op. 38, No. 5; “Floods of Spring,” Op. 14, No. 11; “The Little Island,” Op. 14, No. 2; and “Where Beauty Dwells,” Op. 21, No. 7. These pieces exploit the piano’s delicacy as much as the etudes serve its percussion. Plastic and lyrical, these renditions solidify Russo’s own capacity to capture intimate, salon sentiments without affectation. The Op. 14, No. 11 owes a debt to Turgenev in its emotional urgency. The suavely gorgeous keyboard sound comes to us courtesy of Engineer Ryan Streber. “The Little Island” links Rachmaninov with Debussy and Liszt (his Un sospiro), perhaps by way of Mendelssohn. More passionate arpeggios grace “Where Beauty Dwells,” whose roulades and flourishes obviously charm Russo as much as we.

Russo selects Rachmaninov’s only published piano solo work outside of Russia (1931) for his finale: Rachmaninov wrote the Variations on a Theme of Corelli in 1931 while he vacationed in Switzerland. The theme of the work, though attributed to Corelli, belongs in fact to La Folía, whose origins, at least in printed music, go back to at least the mid-17th century and some fifty years, and essentially presents a chord progression in d minor with a few passing bars in the relative major. Rachmaninov likely admired it as part of his knowledge of Franz Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole. Typical of Rachmaninov’s late style – of the Fourth Piano Concerto – the setting of the theme, terse and laconic, casts a neo-Classic hue on the proceedings.

The twenty variations that follow resemble a full-scale sonata. The first thirteen encapsulate what might be considered a sonata’s first movement, embracing a variety of moods. An ornamental and cadenza-like “Interlude,” loosely based on the theme, then follows before proceeding to the next variations. Shifting to the key of D-flat Major, the following two variations together form a sort of central slow movement and present La Folía in sweetly lyrical tones. Finally, the remaining five variations form the work’s finale, returning abruptly to the tonic key and building the theme through increasingly energetic treatments. With an air of solemnity and mystery the work fades from the fortissimo of the final variation to close softly in the key of d minor. Besides having mastered the sheer digital obstacles Rachmaninov created as a salute to his own, enormous hands, Russo maintains a flexible, fluent line that carries us dramatically even through the poised silences, quite a feat of intelligent virtuosity!

-- Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition

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