Home listening - Rachmaninov big and small, and a night in with Janet Baker

The Guardian 0

The LPO and Vladimir Jurowski do Rachmaninov’s first symphony proud; Boris Giltburg excels in the 24 Preludes. Plus, John Bridcut’s magical new film

• Once you’ve seen The Isle of the Dead, the painting by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin which inspired Rachmaninov’s work of that name, image and sound are impossible to separate: hooded cypresses, rocky outcrops, clouded sky, lonely boatman; slow rhythms, dark textures, mournful woodwind, a musical reference to the Dies irae from the mass for the dead. In an own-label disc conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has paired The Isle of the Dead (1909) with Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 1, a more youthful work which had a famously catastrophic first performance in 1897, in part due to inadequate rehearsal time. Despite his subsequent psychological crisis, Rachmaninov did not destroy the score, and eventually admitted it had some value – fortunately for us. It’s a soaring, big-boned work, overflowing with melody and characteristic Rachmaninov melancholy. If only the composer had lived to see how a partnership like Jurowski and the LPO, superbly prepared, can make this work blaze and sing.