Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 10/30/2007, uploaded on 01/20/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In this recital program, we see how early 20^th Century Russian composers influenced the music of American composers of the mid-late 20^th Century.

Etude-Tableaux, Op. 39 

No. 5 in e-flat minor (http://www.classicalconnect.com/Rachmaninov/Etude_Tableaux_Op_39/881); 

No. 6 in a minor (http://www.classicalconnect.com/Rachmaninov/Etude_Tableaux_Op_39/882);

No. 8 in d minor (http://www.classicalconnect.com/Rachmaninov/Etude_Tableaux_Op_39/883)   

Sergei Rachmaninoff                          

Lullaby from Before Sleep and Dreams                       Aaron Jay Kernis

The Rachmaninoff Etudes (1917) represent the Post-Romanticism of the early Twentieth Century.  This is Rachmaninoff stubbornly holding onto the lyricism and rich tonality of the 19^th century Romantic tradition in the face of the atonal revolution.  The Kernis Lullaby (1987) is composed at the other end of the atonality craze, looking toward a new future that embraces sensuous harmonic color within a Post-Modern sensibility.    Gideon Rubin

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.