Yes, it finally happened. It's not that I didn't get around to posting this until now, or that time got away from me. It's that I literally forgot today was Thursday.
Ugh!
So anyway, here's something I'll be returning to in a future post: the miraculous third movement of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, in its entirety. This person has helpfully divided it into two videos, but done so in a very logical way. I'll be exploring his performances of the entire symphony, because I've long had it in mind to write a really exhaustive post annotated the work and why I think it's such a towering masterpiece. But for now, here's the movement. Play the second part after the first, obviously. This works very well, actually, as there is an actual break in the music as Rachmaninov wrote it, a second or two of heavenly silence before things start again.
(I think a part of my deep internalization of this piece is helped by the fact that I never heard the awful pop song based on melodies from this movement, Eric Carmen's "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again", until just a few years ago. I heard it, of all places, on the Muzak at The Store. I stopped in my tracks and just stood there in some kind of shock when I realized that the crappy musical wallpaper I was hearing was my beloved Rachmaninov. Betrayer most foul!)
(Apropos of my recent complaint about the Buffalo Philharmonic's almost wonderful performance of this beloved piece of mine, the section they cut from the performance starts at the 1:20 mark of the second video (roughly) and picks back up at about 3:55.)
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