The Polka Italienne (Italian Polka) is a piano work for two pianos by Sergei Rachmaninoff. [1] It was composed in 1906. The piece begins in the key of E-flat minor then changes to E-flat major during the middle section.
The Polka Italienne (Italian Polka) is a piano work for two pianos by Sergei Rachmaninoff. [1] It was composed in 1906. The piece begins in the key of E-flat minor then changes to E-flat major during the middle section.
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he made a point of using his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument.
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, is a concertante work written by Sergei Rachmaninoff for piano and orchestra, closely resembling a piano concerto, all in a single movement. Rachmaninoff wrote the work at his summer home, the Villa Senar in Switzerland, according to the score, from 3 July to 18 August 1934. Rachmaninoff himself, a noted performer of his own works, played the piano part at the piece's premiere on 7 November 1934, at the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore, Maryland, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, was composed in the summer of 1909. The piece was premiered on November 28 of that year in New York City with the composer as soloist, accompanied by the New York Symphony Society under Walter Damrosch. The work has the reputation of being one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical piano repertoire.
The Violin Sonata No. 8 in G major, Op. 30, No. 3, by Ludwig van Beethoven, the third of his Opus 30 set, was written between 1801 and 1802, published in May 1803, and dedicated to Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque No. 2 in D minor, Op. 9 is a piano trio which he began composing on 25 October 1893 and completed on 15 December that year. It was written in memory of Tchaikovsky, and was inscribed with the dedication "In Memory of a Great Artist". It was first performed in Moscow on 31 January 1894 by Rachmaninoff himself, the violinist Julius Conus, and the cellist Anatoli Brandukov.
D-flat major is a major scale based on D♭, consisting of the pitches D♭, E♭, F, G♭, A♭, B♭ and C. Its key signature has five flats. It is enharmonically equivalent to C-sharp major.
Arcadi Arcadievich Volodos is a Russian pianist and composer. His first name is sometimes transliterated Arcady or Arkady.
B-flat minor is a minor scale based on B♭, consisting of the pitches B♭, C, D♭, E♭, F, G♭, and A♭. Its key signature has five flats. Its relative major is D-flat major and its parallel major is B-flat major. Its enharmonic equivalent, A-sharp minor, which would contain seven sharps, is not normally used.
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F♯ minor, Op. 1, in 1891, at age 17-18. He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti. He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.
Suite No. 1 in G Minor , Op. 5, is a suite for two pianos written by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The suite was a musical depiction of four poems written in the summer of 1893 at the Lysikof estate in Lebeden, Kharkov. The work was dedicated to Tchaikovsky, as he was one of Rachmaninoff's greatest inspirations and proponents. The premiere took place on November 30, 1893, having been played by Rachmaninoff himself and Pavel Pabst in Moscow, with Tchaikovsky having died a month prior. Its four movements alongside their respective poems are as follows:
Suite No. 2, Op. 17, is a composition for two pianos by Sergei Rachmaninoff, written in Italy in the first months of 1901. Alongside his Second Piano Concerto, Op. 18, it confirmed a return of creativity for the composer after four unproductive years caused by the negative critical reception of his First Symphony, Op. 13. The Suite was first performed on November 24 that year by the composer and his cousin Alexander Siloti.
Ten Preludes, Op. 23, is a set of ten preludes for solo piano, composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1901 and 1903. This set includes the famous Prelude in G minor.
Thirteen Preludes, Op. 32, is a set of thirteen preludes for solo piano, composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1910.
Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36, is a piano sonata in B-flat minor composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1913, who revised it in 1931, with the note, "The new version, revised and reduced by author."
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 was completed in November 1901 and published a year later.
The composer Sergei Rachmaninoff produced a number of solo piano pieces that were either lost, unpublished, or not assigned an opus number. While often disregarded in the concert repertoire, they are nevertheless part of his oeuvre. Sixteen of these pieces are extant; all others are lost. Ten of these pieces were composed before he completed his Piano Concerto No. 1, his first opus, and the rest interspersed throughout his later life. In these casual works, he draws upon the influence of other composers, including Frédéric Chopin and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The more substantial works, the Three Nocturnes and Four Pieces, are sets of well-thought out pieces that are his first attempts at cohesive structure among multiple pieces. Oriental Sketch and Prelude in D minor, two pieces he composed very late in his life, are short works that exemplify his style as a mature composer. Whether completed as a child or adult, these pieces cover a wide spectrum of forms while maintaining his characteristic Russian style.
Russian Rhapsody is a piece for two pianos in E minor composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1891, when he was 18 years old. It is more accurately described as a set of variations on a theme, rather than a true rhapsody. It was premièred on October 29, 1891, and its performance lasts approximately nine minutes.
Franz Behr was a prolific, but minor, and now almost forgotten, German composer of songs and salon pieces for piano.
Alexander Borodin's Scherzo in A-flat major is a lively piece written in 1885, while Borodin was in Belgium for an early performance of his then incomplete opera Prince Igor. It was originally written for solo piano, but in 1889 Alexander Glazunov orchestrated it, along with the Petite Suite. Borodin dedicated the piece to Théodore Jadoul, who made a four-hand piano arrangement of it.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Polka de W.R. is a virtuoso piano arrangement of Franz Behr's Lachtäubchen (Scherzpolka) in F major.
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