Ivan Gusev: Rachmaninov, Paganini-Liszt
Rachmaninov’s Études Tableaux in A minor (“The Sea and the Seagulls”) is one of the composer’s crowning achievements.
Gusev’s performance was mesmerizing. I looked for a comparable performance on the Internet and found just one, by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
The work opens in a dream-like state. The right hand crosses the left to punctuate Rachmaninov’s reflective arpeggios with a slow bass motif..
This morphs into waves of excruciating collapse at...
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