My first contact with Rachmaninoff was through a recording given to me by my maternal grandmother, pianist Berta da Nóbrega. It was an LP of his first and second piano concerti performed by Ashkenazy and conducted by André Previn. I was left speechless by the sounds, harmonies and textures. I knew right away that one day I would have to play these works. This eventually happened, but at the time of the dream I was only 6 years old!
Soon after this I heard my piano teacher Sequeira Costa and his then wife, the pianist Tania Achot, perform the Second Suite for two pianos, thus uniting two of my great loves: Rachmaninoff and piano duos. The only thing better than one piano playing Rachmaninoff is two pianos playing Rachmaninoff! By this point I was already falling in love with the Preludes, the Moments Musicaux and the Etudes Tableaux. The transcriptions would come later when I witnessed my teacher learn and record them. This was fascinating to witness and proved an invaluable resource when the time came to learn and record them myself.
It would be some time later, when I was 18, that I would perform Rachmaninoff in public for the first time when I played the second concerto in Lisbon, Portugal during the finals of the 1987 Vianna da Motta International Piano Competition. I was awarded the first prize. In 1990, Rachmaninoff proved once again to be my good luck charm when I played his second piano sonata and the third piano concerto at the 1990 Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, where I was fortunate enough to win once again.
So my message about Rachmaninoff is very much an emotional, personal one. This is music that has kept me company all my life and will continue to do so until my fingers can no longer play it, and even then… It is present in practically every page of my personal diary and by recording the complete works for solo piano, which encompass most of Rachmaninoff’s life, I am able to share with you many pages of his personal diary and the many surprises they hold. We really don’t know as much of his piano music as we think we do!
Through these recordings I want to invite you into the personal world of one of the great Romantics; a composer, conductor and pianist who voices his most personal thoughts, sadnesses and joys through an instrument he understands with a degree of knowledge very few have achieved. I want his music to speak for itself, through its conviction, its power and its eternal message: the endless variety of the human condition.
Artur Pizarro
