Sergei Rachmaninov’s music has ‘an oversized significance’ for chief conductor Kirill Petrenko – in it he finds his ‘musical home’. The third joint edition with the Berliner Philharmoniker is dedicated to the Russian composer,
who will celebrate his 150th birthday in 2023. It presents four central works: the Second Symphony, the Piano Concerto No. 2 and The Isle of the Dead – Rachmaninov regularly performed them together until his emigration in 1917 – as well as the Symphonic Dances, which the composer wrote shortly before his death. As a tribute to Rachmaninov, the recordings are being released on Blu-ray and CD in a hardcover box with an accompanying book designed by photo artist Thomas Struth and comprehensive introductory texts.

At the premiere of his Second Piano Concerto in 1901, the young Sergei Rachmaninov himself sat at the piano – a triumph that laid the foundation for the pianist and composer’s brilliant international career. To this day, the work is one of the most popular of its genre with its urgent, passionate character, yearning melodies and lush late Romantic harmonies. Chief conductor Kirill Petrenko and pianist Kirill Gerstein, who presented the piece with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the 2022 Waldbühne concert, are united by a deep love for Rachmaninov’s music.

In 1906, the composer, now in his early 30s, wrote the centrepiece of this edition: his Second Symphony. After the fiasco suffered by his First Symphony, the successful premiere of his Second was a rehabilitation of the symphonist. It is a self-assured work in which Rachmaninov defied the neoclassical trends of the early 20th century, remained true to tonality and anticipated the style of Hollywood film music with his languorous tonal language. Kirill Petrenko emphasises not only the enormous emotional content of the music but also its masterly texture.

The five-note rhythm of the symphonic poem Die Toteninsel rocks like a boat on high waves. Rachmaninov was inspired by a black-and-white copy of Arnold Böcklin’s painting of the same name. Not only here, but also in other works by the composer, the threatening Dies irae motif from the funeral liturgy appears again and again – a veritable obsession of Rachmaninov.

Now in exile in America and suffering from homesickness, Rachmaninov drew a poignant conclusion to his oeuvre a few years before his death with the Symphonic Dances: quotations from his symphonies are intermingled with an examination of the American attitude to life in the era of industrialisation – and the Dies Irae motif is heard again and again. The composer himself said that the Symphonic Dances were his best work – and so they form the ideal conclusion to this homage by the Berliner Philharmoniker to Sergei Rachmaninov, whose 150th
birthday will be celebrated in 2023.

Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko
Kirill Gerstein:piano

Sergej Rachmaninow
Symphonie Nr. 2 e-Moll op. 27
Die Toteninsel op. 29
Konzert für Klavier und Orchester Nr. 2 c-Moll op. 18
Symphonische Tänze op. 45