Subtitled ‘Fantaisie-Tableaux’, Rachmaninov composed his Suite No. 1 for two pianos in 1893. He gave the first performance with Pavel Pabst in Moscow on 30 November 1893. This was an occasion tinged with sadness: Rachmaninov dedicated the Suite to Tchaikovsky, who was planning to attend, but he died a few weeks earlier (and even before the premiere of the Suite, Rachmaninov started work on his tragic Trio élégiaque Op. 9 written in memory of Tchaikovsky). The Suite consists of four movements each of which was inspired by poetry. The ‘Barcarolle’ evokes a melancholy gondolier’s song, based on a poem by Lermontov in which ‘the gondola glides through the water, and time glides over surges of love.’ The second movement, ‘The Night…the love’ was inspired by Byron and depicts a passionate night-time tryst (‘It is the hour when lovers’ vows seem sweet in every whisper’d word’), accompanied by the song of a nightingale. In ‘Tears’, Rachmaninov took a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev about an endless cascade of weeping, evoked in the music by a series of falling phrases. The last movement, ‘Easter’, takes lines by Alexei Khomyakov as its starting point: ‘Across the earth a might bell is ringing … exulting in that holy victory.’ For this, Rachmaninov produced a magnificent evocation of Orthodox church bells – large and small – chiming at different speeds, and he also incorporated the chant ‘Christ is risen’.

Nigel Simeone