He is currently the “Rachmaninoff interpreter supreme”, according to the Guardian. In recent years, pianist Daniil Trifonov has recorded all four of the composer’s piano concertos as well as the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Accompanied by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, known for its historical affinity with the composer, he now presents the five works for piano and orchestra on one release.

Destination Rachmaninov is released on the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth with Trifonov’s transcriptions of the popular Vocalise and Silver Sleigh Bells, a bravura arrangement from the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Bells, and also with Rachmaninoff’s own transcription of three movements from J.S. Bach’s Partita BWV 1006, originally for solo violin.
The edition of three CDs and a Pure Audio Blu-ray also includes the first CD release of an extended version of Vocalise. The digital release, in turn, brings the two original Destination Rachmaninov albums (Arrival and Departure) as well as a shorter recording of the Vocalise to the ear in Dolby Atmos sound format for the first time.

Rachmaninoff wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1891 when he was just 18 years old, a work “full of hopes and romantic ideals”, as Trifonov says. The pianist plays it in a new version by the composer from 1917, but the openness and optimism of the first writing can still be felt. Rachmaninoff’s love of Bach is expressed in the polyphony of the Second Piano Concerto, which was written between 1900 and 1901. For Trifonov, this work is the moment when the composer’s “ideas, form, technique and lyrical inspiration rise to mature balance and expressivity”. In contrast, the epic Third Piano Concerto from 1909 is for him a work of “solemn intimacy” – “the composer holds an inner dialogue with himself and with God”. The Fourth Piano Concerto, written in 1926, ten years after Rachmaninoff left Russia, shows how the composer came to terms with the diverse, cosmopolitan influences of the West, the music of Gershwin and Debussy, the artistic currents of Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism, and also the comic genius of Charlie Chaplin.

The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini from 1934 was to be Rachmaninoff’s last work for piano and orchestra. The virtuoso 24 variations are tightly conceived and at the same time full of creative vitality and expressive intensity. “I see the Rhapsody,” says Trifonov, “as a miniature ballet, a dance with destiny that is about Paganini’s soul.”

In this major project, the pianist will be accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of its music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Rachmaninoff himself worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra for 30 years. He premiered the Rhapsody and the Fourth Piano Concerto with the ensemble and recorded many other compositions with them. Nézet-Séguin and his musicians draw on their own tradition with the virtuosity and warmth of their strings and the unmistakable timbre of the brass and woodwinds.