Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 08/14/2007, uploaded on 01/15/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Vocalise for Cello and Piano                  Sergei Rachmaninov

Rachmaninoff wrote so much bravura piano music and so many dramatic orchestral works that one tends to overlook his greatest strength as a composer - an incredible lyric gift best evident in his more than seventy songs and numerous choral works.  Vocalise dates from the summer of 1912, when he completed a cycle of fourteen songs, tailoring each to the talents of an individual Russian singer he knew.  The last of the fourteen - dedicated to soprano Antonina Nezhdanovka, a member of the Moscow Grand Opera - was wordless.  The song proved popular, and a few years later, at the suggestion of conductor Serge Koussevitsky, Rachmaninoff arranged Vocalise for string orchestra.   Vocalise offers Rachmaninoff's most bittersweet lyricism, suffused with a dark, elegiac quality.  It was performed at Rachmaninoff's memorial service.     Kenneth Olsen

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.