SERGEI RACHMANINOFF - FOOTAGE AND PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4

Sergei Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor Op. 40 I. Allegro vivace [Alla breve] II. Largo III. Allegro vivace Nikolai Petrov, piano Moscow Radio Large Symphony Orchestra Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, conductor Even though Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Fourth is the last of his piano concerti, it is very much music from a composer-in-process – an unusual fact considering that Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was 54 years old at the time of its premiere and already had the successes of his second and third piano concerti under his belt. Since the days of those enormous works, however, much had happened, both in Rachmaninoff’s life and in the life of the world. Encroaching Soviet activity in the composer’s native Russia had finally forced him to leave the country for good, emigrating to New York. Furthermore, the very face of music was changing: the Romantic idioms that had made Rachmaninoff such a success at the Moscow Conservatory some 35 years earlier were being swept away