Classical: Piano music of Chopin, Flagello, and Rachmaninoff

26 MP3 Songs in this album (65:20) !
Related styles: CLASSICAL: Chopin, CLASSICAL: Piano solo

People who are interested in Frédéric Chopin Sergei Rachmaninoff should consider this download.


Details:
Notes on the recording, excerpted from the CD's liner notes

All the works on this recording were either composed by Chopin or inspired by his music. Together (along with a Chopin-Godowsky Etude) they made up a recital Rorianne Schrade performed throughout 2007, including at the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York City and at the Sevenars Music Festival in Worthington, Massachusetts.
The Twenty-four Preludes by Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) need almost no introduction. Composed from about 1838-39, they journey through every key (twelve each in major and minor), and they run the gamut of moods, from rage to âfrozen despairâ (the words of George Sand), from nostalgia to heavenly release.
Etude, Hommage à Chopin, was composed by admired American composer Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994) at the age of fourteen. A listener can hear in it several references to Chopinâs music, but especially the left hand rhythms and brilliance of Chopinâs Prelude No. 16. It was this âHommageâ that Flagello performed for Rachmaninoff when they first met.
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) developed his monumental Variations on a Theme by Chopin, Op. 22 in 1903 from the seed of Chopinâs somber Prelude No. 20 in C minor. In seemingly unlimited techniques, textures, colors, and moods, Rachmaninoff extracts worlds of music from each note of Chopinâs theme, which, in its final transformation to major, is virtually beatified.



About the Pianist, Rorianne Schrade

â... wit, passion, and graceâ
The New Yorker (Talk of the Town feature)

â... a whirlwind unleashedâ
Gannett Press


Winner of a wide array of prizes, Rorianne has inspired glowing praise from the press, for her passionate recordings and performances (including Carnegieâs Weill Hall and Lincoln Center). Rorianne has been especially noted for brilliant performances of works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including those of Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Liadov, Liapounoff, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and particularly Balakirev, whose music she recorded for a 1995 release (Centaur CRC 2236). Her most recent CD from 2005 (Piano Transcriptions of Johann Strauss II, CRC 2721) has also received high praise, including from the American Record Guide and the All Music Guide.
Along with solo, concerto, and chamber appearances, Ms. Schrade has performed with the Schrade family pianists at numerous critically acclaimed concerts at Lincoln Center in New York as well as the family founded Sevenars Music Festival in Massachusetts (âone of the best small music festivals in the USA,â Time Magazine).
In addition to her performing and teaching, Rorianne has been on the writing staff of New York Concert Review since 2006. Long before this professional association, this magazineâs esteemed critic, Harris Goldsmith, had praised her for âthe nuance and flexibility that had this listener thinking of Rachmaninoffâs own recordingsâ and for being âa player who embraces the values of a seemingly long-vanished pianistic style.
Rorianne lives with her husband in New York City where she teaches privately (having taught at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division for over a decade). She is a Steinway Artist.