Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music holds the infinite horizon of the Russian landscape and the ocean depths of universal human feeling. The Second Piano Concerto marks the composer’s rebirth after a prolonged creative crisis – Rachmaninoff returns to composing full of manly restraint, yet he cannot hide how full his heart is, and this is best heard in the indescribable beauty of the concerto’s second movement.
#ConcertTalks with Goran Gora is a series intended
1) developing the imagination,
2) gaining a sense of the world’s cultural space,
3) stimulating brain activity.
4) deciphering relationships between people.
At each meeting the LNSO offers not a cocktail of short pieces, but one solid classical music hit to be heard from start to finish.
Not a tweet, but a lengthier conversation. Not a short poem, but an epic one. Not a short story, but a novel. Not a brisk handshake, but a warmer embrace. An extended conversation with the listener, offered by the composer.
Before listening to the symphonic hit – historically engaging details, a look at the composer’s state of mind at the time the work was written, the context of the era, and notable musical details worth listening for. After this brief concert talk – the symphonic hit itself, heard in full.
Reinis Zariņš – piano