# Rachmaninov 4



## Star

I recently acquired a performance of Vladimir Ashkenazy playing the Rachmaninov fourth piano concerto. It is somewhat different from his other concertos, sometimes sounding more like Prokofiev . However I think it is a terrific piece and much undervalued . Do we know why? 
If you enjoy it too please state your favoured recordings IV the piece.


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## EdwardBast

The Fourth Concerto was written fifteen years after the Third and on the other side of the world. 
- Rachmaninoff's style of orchestration changed over time, the later works, including the Fourth Concerto (1926)(and there were only six late works) having lighter, clearer textures than the early ones, that is, those composed in Russia.
- in his last works composed in Russia, especially the songs Op. 38 and the Etudes Tableaus op. 39 (1917), Rachmaninoff was developing a more adventurous harmonic language with a tolerance for sharper dissonance. 
- Oh yeah, his piano writing got a bit leaner - less romantically lush - in his late music.

These features would tend to put the Fourth more toward the sound world of Prokofiev than the earlier concertos.


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## bharbeke

I like the version with Rachmaninoff, Ormandy, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.


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## joen_cph

I´d reach for Michelangeli/Gracis, on EMI.

He can be a bit cold in some of his recordings & he is not really a general favourite pianist of mine, but I did a comparison with some other soloits in this work & he turned out to be very good, a good sense of line, for example.


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## Larkenfield

I much prefer the dazzling Hornstein/Wild recording with its bigger, more expensive opening. It has a warmer string sound, more presence to the piano, and more of a Scriabinesque ecstasy that I believe Rachmaninoff might have been going for. I doubt if Rachmaninov was going for emotion in the same way that he did in his previous concertos, but much more of an ecstatic, emotionally indirect or oblique quality. 

I believe it’s one of his freest, most adventurous and progressive works. It’s Rachmaninoff but it shows his personal growth. It has more of a modern feel, quite virtuosic, rhythmically and 20th-century energetic, yet with moments of great simplicity in the slower movements and a simpler less dense orchestration. 

I can hear why he was criticized because the orchestra carrries most of the melodic content rather than the piano, and it has its moments of emotional disquiet. But after he revised it, I believe it was what he wanted, even if it may not have been what his public wanted. He wrote without compromise. I consider it innovative for him and like it very much.


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## DavidA

Michelangeli's recording of this concerto is generally reckoned to be one of the greatest concerto recordings of all time. He really makes your hair stand up on end with his pianism, even outdoing the composer himself on this occasion. I have other versions by the composer himself, by Wild and Entremont, but it is Michelangeli who sets the standard.


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## Rafaelcrt

Michelangeli/Gracis is fantastic.
But I'd go for the composer's recording with Ormandy.


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## DavidA

Rafaelcrt said:


> Michelangeli/Gracis is fantastic.
> But I'd go for the composer's recording with Ormandy.


I think Michelangeli outdoes even the composer


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## mbhaub

For a long time my vote for the 4th would have been Earl Wild/Jascha Horenstein from the Reader's Digest series, thankfully put on CD by Chandos. But then along came the Stephen Hough/Andrew Litton set with the Dallas Symphony on Hyperion that is now the best complete set available at any price, on any label, from any performers. It's that good. But there's nothing wrong with the Ashkenazy recordings - his FIRST ones with Andre Previn. I was not so enamored with his remakes with Haitink.

I would also like to commend those of you who spell the composer's name "Rachmaninoff". That is how he signed it when he was living in the west and that's how it should be spelled - not the Rachmaninov that so many sites use, or other spellings, Cyrillic transliteration notwithstanding. That's what he used and it's good enough for me.


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## Pat Fairlea

Ashkenazy/Previn is very satisfying, for the obvious understanding between soloist and conductor.
But I still turn to Rachmaninoff's recording with Ormandy as first choice. The contrast in genre and technique between the Late Romantic 2nd movement and the punchy, rhythmical 3rd is fascinating. I think the 4th Concerto is seriously under-rated.


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## kyjo

I like this work very much and agree that it is quite underrated. While it may not have the grand, sweeping melodies of the first three concerti, in many ways it is a more interesting work and invites more repeated listening than its predecessors. I especially love the exciting, percussive finale. Ashkenazy/Previn is an excellent recording.


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## CnC Bartok

I like Mikhail Rudy and of course Vladimir Ashkenazy in this one, admittedly the Cinderella of the four (or five if you count the Rhapsody). A recent excellent one is done by Yevgeny Sudbin on BIS, a very fine pianist, that one! He does the original version, I think most recordings out there are of the final revised version?

Michelangeli of course reigns supreme. There's a reason his recording is so widely praised.....


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## Judith

mbhaub said:


> For a long time my vote for the 4th would have been Earl Wild/Jascha Horenstein from the Reader's Digest series, thankfully put on CD by Chandos. But then along came the Stephen Hough/Andrew Litton set with the Dallas Symphony on Hyperion that is now the best complete set available at any price, on any label, from any performers. It's that good. But there's nothing wrong with the Ashkenazy recordings - his FIRST ones with Andre Previn. I was not so enamored with his remakes with Haitink.
> 
> I would also like to commend those of you who spell the composer's name "Rachmaninoff". That is how he signed it when he was living in the west and that's how it should be spelled - not the Rachmaninov that so many sites use, or other spellings, Cyrillic transliteration notwithstanding. That's what he used and it's good enough for me.


Have the Stephen Hough set. No so familiar as 2nd & 3rd but now have the inspiration to get to know it. The two are beautiful recordings so trust that the 4th will be!


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## Polyphemus

For me its Ashkenazy/Previn. They seem to have been musically atuned to each other. 
Ther have been a plethora of discs of numbers 2 & 3 and 1 & 4 appear to have been relatively less fortunate.
For anyone who wants to explore these concerti then you can't go far wrong with the aforementioned Ashkenazy/Previn set.
I must add ,if I may, that the Ashkenazy/Fistoulari recording of No 3 is a must have.


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## Star

I am enjoying Ashkenazy in this piece.


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## Judith

Judith said:


> Have the Stephen Hough set. No so familiar as 2nd & 3rd but now have the inspiration to get to know it. The two are beautiful recordings so trust that the 4th will be!


Further to this post. Just listened and loved it. Has elements of 3rd and the powerful final movement was wonderful. Knew wouldn't be disappointed with Hough's performance


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## SixFootScowl

So, I heard there is an original version of Piano Concerto #4 that is worth hearing. There are only a few recordings on disk, but then to add to the confusion *I see that there are three versions*:

1926 (1st version)
1928 (2nd version)
1941 (3rd version)

Anybody familiar with these earlier versions? I suspect 1926 and 1928 are not as different as 1941.

EDIT: Here, I found something on it:



> Little is written about the history of the Fourth Concerto, other than the fact that the version usually played dates from 1941. Some may be aware of an earlier version, published in 1928 - yet unknown for many years was the existence of the original version from 1926, ...*[continue reading here]*


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## CnC Bartok

Yevgeny Sudbin plays the very first version on BIS, coupled with the stupendously good Medtner 2nd Concerto. Being simplistic, it's longer (nearly 31 mins, compared to the usual 26 or 27?), and even more ruminative (polite version of waffle!) than the accepted version. But then again, it sounds more virtuosic to me anyway.

I really admire Sudbin, and this is a fine recording, even with a somewhat obscure little orchestra. However, in black and white terms, he was probably right to revise it!

If you want a comparison to try, Rudy/Jansons offer the finales from both versions on EMI.


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## Manxfeeder

Fritz Kobus said:


> So, I heard there is an original version of Piano Concerto #4 that is worth hearing. There are only a few recordings on disk, but then to add to the confusion


I have nothing to add in answer to your question but just to comment that I appreciate those who read older threads and resurrect them. I wasn't into Rachmaninoff when this was originally posted, so I ignored it. Now that I'm in a Rachmaninoff phase, these kinds of things are interesting.


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## SixFootScowl

I ended up grabbing this one as the original 1926 version of Piano Concerto #4. The bonus is I get a Scriabin (alt spelling on cover?) work I have never heard before.


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## SixFootScowl

Other options:

This one says 1927 version on the back, and you also get Act 1 of Monna Vanna (he never finshed this opera). I'd have grabbed this as it is lower price used, but I will be getting that same Monna Vanna in my big 28-disk set.









This was also tempting, but the original of Piano Concerto #1 is not as interesting to me. Certainly a recording for the completest. Just says original version for both and does not give the year for PC #4. 









Anybody know of any other sets for these?

Also, I heard the second piano sonata was revised to its detriment, but it may be that the earlier version is well recorded. I just have not had time or inclination to investigate that one yet.


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## Manxfeeder

Fritz Kobus said:


> This was also tempting, but the original of Piano Concerto #1 is not as interesting to me. Certainly a recording for the completest. Just says original version for both and does not give the year for PC #4.


That's the one I have. It's included in the Decca Rachmaninov complete works set along with the more famous versions. I haven't paid much attention to them (just because of time; it's a big set), but you're picquing my interest.


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## SixFootScowl

A little more light shed by Max Harrison in Rachmaninoff: Life, Works, Recordings (p336):



> [In 1941 Rachmaninoff made] a final revision to Concerto No. 4, which emerged even more heavily cut than the revisions of 1928. In fact, the 'manuscript,' now in the Library of Congress, is a printed copy of the 1928 publication on which Rachmaninoff worked with scissors and paste, making additions in his own hand.


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## flamencosketches

"Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Sahara of musical trash."
--Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff

Who was he talking about when he said that? :lol:


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## SixFootScowl

flamencosketches said:


> "Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Sahara of musical trash."
> --Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff
> 
> Who was he talking about when he said that? :lol:


Don't know but here is greater context:









WIkiquote says it is an "Extract from an interview by James Francis Cooke, as given in the 1999 edition of Great Pianists on Piano Playing (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999) p. 217."


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## SixFootScowl

Or maybe this from Wikiquote sheds some light:


> I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. --Sergei Rachmaninoff
> 
> Interviewed by Leonard Liebling in The Musical Courier, 1939; cited from Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) p. 351.


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