Pianist László Borbély Recorded Live in Stereo Pure DSD 256!
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Playing Rachmaninoff is part of being a pianist. When I play Rachmaninoff, I may find even greater satisfaction in being part of the ongoing adventure of pianism.

When I play Rachmaninoff, my fingers dream, not me. I have chosen one for the album from an uncapturable plethora of Preludes and Etude-images. My selection is purely an intuitive selection of a single illuminating moment.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Preludes (1903/1910) and Etude-tableaux (“Etude-images”) (1911/1916) are the pinnacle of his piano oeuvre. These piano pieces, like the composer’s entire piano oeuvre, are the inescapable cornerstones of a pianist’s career.

Rachmaninoff knew his instrument in a depth that very few people do: a blend of transparency and complexity that can combine a work at the level of total reality with a sense of total unreality. Neither performer nor listener can remain “outside” of this music, which draws you in and lures you on a journey that is dangerous yet irresistibly attractive.

The prelude was handed down from the Baroque period to later music, and many stylistic traces of it can be heard in Rachmaninoff’s preludes. There are various baroque figurations, baroque rhythms (e.g. siciliano), but also the ‘motoric’ and playful attitude of baroque music in general. In the 19th century, a practice developed whereby sellers used to ‘prelude’ the ‘official’ program of a concert by ‘improvising’ a kind of motto before the concert, as a kind of warm-up, a kind of ‘prelude’.

László Borbély, Piano