Rustem Hayroudinoff Archive

RACHMANINOV: Piano Sonatas; TCHAIKOVSKY: Lullaby – Rustem Hayroudinoff, piano – Onyx

by Audiophile Audition | Aug 17, 2017 | Classical Reissue Reviews

RACHMANINOV: Piano Sonata No. 1 in d minor, Op. 28; TCHAIKOVSKY: Lullaby, Op. 16, No. 1 (arr. Rachmaninov); RACHMANINOV: Piano Sonata No. 2 in b-flat minor, Op. 36 (ed. Hayroudinoff) – Rustem Hayroudinoff, piano – Onyx ONYX 4181, 66:38 (6/23/17) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****: Pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff injects voluptuous energy into the Rachmaninov piano sonatas. Rachmaninov in 1907 confessed to pianist Konstantin Igumnov that the spell of Liszt’s Eine Faust-Symphonie had held him in thrall, and that he conceived his d minor sonata as a representation of the three main characters: Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles. Following Liszt—and to a degree, Wagner—Rachmaninov employed an amalgam of sonata-form and leitmotivic development in the first movement to express Faust’s simultaneous attraction to earthly and spiritual pleasures. Five identifiable motifs crowd the Allegro moderato first movement, among which a Russian orthodox chant emerges amid the welter of often polyphonic activity that often recalls Liszt’s own Dante Sonata and its own urgency for spiritual ascent. Huyroudinoff plays the opening movement with an ongoing, unbroken sense of sweep and directed energy, much as he might realize a sonata by Beethoven. The sparkling figures at the movement’s end enjoy the pearly-play we associate with the Etudes-Tableaux, […]