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Rachmaninov: Symphony No 1; Prince Rostislav
VOX-NX-3029CD (Vox Classics, CD)
REISSUE (24 November 2023)
Playing time: 62'13"
Tracks: 5
℗ 1977 Vox Productions Inc / 2023 Naxos Rights Europe Ltd
© 2023 Naxos Rights (Europe) Ltd
Main country of recording: United States of America
Reviewer: Geoff Pearce
Review of Rachmaninov: Symphony No 1; Prince Rostislav published on 5 December 2023
St Louis Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943):
Symphony No 1 in D minor, Op 13 (1895)
1 Grave – Allegro non troppo
2 Allegro animato
3 Larghetto
4 Allegro con fuoco
5 Prince Rostislav (1891) - Symphonic Poem after Aleksey Tolstoy
The first performance of Rachmaninov's Symphony No 1 in D minor was a notorious failure. It took until the 1940s for the work to gain recognition, and it contains much that is recognisable from the composer's later works - brooding intensity, lyricism and yearning, orchestral colour and grandeur, written in a profoundly Russian manner. Unperformed during the composer's lifetime, Prince Rostislav exudes Rachmaninov's familiar qualities of melancholy and voluptuousness; and both works feature his pervasive use of the Dies irae theme. These Vox recordings conducted by Leonard Slatkin were originally issued as LPs in 1977 on QCE 31099 and later reissued in 1982 on 4-VCL 9013.
No booklet was provided with the digital copy of this album which we were sent for review.