Faber Music have published a new transcription of Rachmaninoff’s song In the Silence of the Secret Night from pianist Kirill Gerstein. The three-minute piece is taken from the composer’s song cycle Six Romances, Op. 4, setting a poem by Afanasy Fet describing a fitful lover’s nocturnal yearning. The publication is available for digital download and as print-on-demand.
In an interview with Joshua Barone from the New York Times, Gerstein said, “He [Rachmaninoff] is one of the most often performed composers, contrary to what was promised by a lot of his critical contemporaries…When I think of his music, one of the words that flashes in my mind is sincerity. The passions seem grand, and it takes a lot of courage and sincerity not to tuck them under this or that stylish cloth, or intellectual movement.”
Watch Gerstein perform In the Silence of the Secret Night below, part of his forthcoming Rachmaninoff recording which also features the composer’s Piano Concerto No.2 with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Kirill Petrenko.
