Program Five • Rachmaninoff’s Russian Contemporaries

Rachmaninoff considered Medtner “the greatest composer of our time,” and the latter’s little-known Piano Quintet features in Program Five, “Rachmaninoff’s Russian Contemporaries.”

A collection of piano, vocal and chamber music from the early 1900s, this program also presents Rachmaninoff’s superlative Cello Sonata and selections from his Thirteen Preludes and Études-tableaux; further piano selections by his brilliant friend and classmate Scriabin, their mutual friend Felix Blumenfeld and the short-lived Vasily Kalinnikov; and works by two Russians better known for their subsequent innovations: Stravinsky, represented by his settings of Two Poems of Paul Verlaine, and Prokofiev, whose single-movement Third Piano Sonata is perhaps the most carefully crafted of his early contributions to the genre.

1 pm Preconcert Talk
1:30 pm Performance: Fei-Fei, Anna Polonsky, Brian Zeger, and Artem Yasynskyy, piano; Gabriel Martins, cello; Viano String Quartet

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
From Thirteen Preludes, Op. 32 (1910); from Études-Tableaux, Op. 33 (1911);
Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 19 (1901)    

Nikolai Medtner (1880–1951)
Piano Quintet in C Major, Op. posth. (1949)

Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)
From Five Preludes, Op. 16 (1895)

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Two Poems of Paul Verlaine (1909)

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Piano Sonata No. 3, Op 28 (1907, rev. 1917)