This well filled CD (79 minutes) contain the complete transcriptions for piano that Rachmaninoff made of compositions of various composers. Being a celebrated pianist and a genius composer, Rachmaninoff didn’t literally transcribe, but added his own unique pianistic and compositional features to them, creating as much his own masterwork as is the original. Ranging from Bach (3 movements from the Violin Partita in E), through transcriptions of his own and Tachikovsky’s songs, Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream of hair-raising difficulty, he ends with fashionable transcriptions of Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, a pianistic tour de force and favourite encore. As a substantial bonus Alexander Ghindin plays the complete Moments Musicaux Op. 16. Ghindin, one of Russia’s foremost young pianists, has the true Rachmaninoff feeling, a mix of melancholy and grandeur, playing with stunning virtuosity and panache.
Alexander Korsantia, born in 1965 in Tiblisi, Georgia, won first prize at the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein Competition in 1995. He has an active international concert career, and is based in Boston, USA.
