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Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto Nos. 2 & 3 on CD

Early recordings by one of today's pre-eminent interpreters of Rachmaninoff. The Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova is renowned for her playing of Rachmaninoff, and in particular the four concertos which she has performed across the world. She made these recordings in 2014, at a relatively early stage in her career, but they capture the rhythmic flexibility and feeling for phrase and emotion which give her interpretation of this music it's particular signature. The sound of bells recurs throughout Rachmaninov's output, including the Second Concerto, even in the intimate exchanges of the finale. 'Those passages can convey tremendous mystery,' Fedorova explained to Peter Quantrill in a Pianist magazine interview, 'if they are played in a slightly detached fashion. I'm looking for a feeling of being slightly lost - not in the notes of the music, but in the mood it creates. The sound should be even, and so should the pulse, but you can't find the ground under your feet. That's the atmosphere I want.' In these familiar works, Fedorova searches for simplicity over sentimentality, because 'simplicity can be more moving. Or if you have a special harmonic moment in a long phrase, you lead into it without too many distractions on the way. Then the surprise - the resolution or the twist - is all the more special. You have to train yourself to do this.' On the page, both works bely their strong melodic flow with densely worked, filigree exchanges between piano and orchestra which demand as much analytical and technical grasp of the notes as the concertos of Brahms. Rachmaninoff himself famously let his emotions speak through his music, which can be all the more moving for it's restraint and close observance to the score, and Fedorova has spent decades with these concertos, absorbing them within her musical bloodstream so that their expressions of passion and nostalgia come as second nature to her.