This week's composer of the week was Sergei Rachmaninoff. Featured below are some contributions from our community of some of his compositions!
Next week's Composer
The next week, we don't have many birthdays of well known composers, so I have selected two composers of the week. We will be taking recommendations of Alberto Ginastera and Claude Bolling.
Rules for submission
- Submit by comment on this post (1 share) or on the appropriate channel on our Discord (3 shares)
- Include a YouTube embed of your recommendation and a few lines about why you chose that particular piece or performance.
- Shares of the SBD the relevant post will be distributed among the chosen recommendations that make it to the Composer of the week post.
This week's composer!
Most people associate Rachmaninov with Piano, and for good reason. Some of his most famous works are for piano. However, did you know he wrote a pretty awesome 'cello sonata?
The piece is also known as "The Bells of Moscow" because the looming, ominous and unwavering chords that drives the music were reminiscent of the tolling of church bells in Moscow, but Rachmaninoff did not actually have the Russian church bells in mind when he composed the music.
When anyone hears the name "Rachmaninoff" the thought leads directly to piano music. One of the post-romantic composers who continued the norm of the Romanticism to the 20th century. Although searching I was impressed to find out that Rachmaninoff has also composed church music. While the Greek Orthodox church stays firm to monophonic chants, it seems that the Russian Orthodox church has followed the western tradition of polyphonic music and various Russian composers have composed chants for the church. Among them, also Rachmaninoff. So, here is a hymn to Virgin Mary by Rachmaninoff:
I was fortunate enough to have heard this symphony played by the St. Louis Symphony when I lived there in my college years. How fitting that I was able to find it's recording on YouTube! One of my professors was Dr. Peter Henderson, the St. Louis Symphony pianist, and he would often comment how he wished he had the impressive fingerspan of Rachmaninoff. I chose the fourth movement particularly because of the wavering high energy and optimistic outlook it provides me. Visually, this piece is wide brushstrokes of light greens and pinks and it's effervescent quality shows bursts of yellows. This movement filled Powell Hall that day with these colors.
Thanks to all the submissions, SBD shares of the Mozart post are on the way!
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