[left that other site]

Thanks for posting that link!

The DYNAMICS of that rendition are fantastic.

On the same YT page is the Rock playing the first movement of his 2nd Piano Concerto.

O. M. G!

[Publius]

Several months ago, I spent several weekends doing the complete works of Rachmaninov, to include a fine video with English subtitles of one of his one-act operas. You can search my FReeper handle to get that month’s worth of work.

The recording of the “Star Spangled Banner” was taken from an Ampico piano roll. Rachmaninov recorded dozens of these rolls, and the reproduction of his dynamics is excellent for a mechanical medium.

Two of the pieces from that effort are deserving of a re-post. One is the original complete 1929 recording of Sergei playing his own Second Concerto with Stokowski on the podium of the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was recorded in RCA’s studio in an old church in Camden, NJ. For early electric direct-to-disk technology, it still sounds pretty decent.

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto #2 in C minor

This link is a shock. An amateur took Rachmaninov’s 1934 recording of the Paganini Rhapsody with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra and re-mastered it himself. It’s better than RCA’s 1973 re-mastering for the Rachmaninov Centennial Edition and sounds like it was recorded recently. I sent the link to Adam Neiman, one of the best young Rachmaninov pianists in the game, and he was blown away by the quality.

Rachmaninov: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

In the original posting, I told the story of my mother’s encounter with Rachmaninov in 1936 when she was a star-struck teenager teaching herself piano. I also did analyses of both pieces.