Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings, Kirill Gerstein, and Platoon announce the release of Rachmaninoff 150, an album that traces the evolution of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s creative vision over the course of his lifetime. The album features both studio recordings of solo piano works, and a live recording of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, performed by Kirill Gerstein with the Berliner Philharmoniker, led by their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, captured at the iconic Waldbühne amphitheater in Berlin in June 2022. The album will be released exclusively on Apple Music May 19 and widely across all platforms on June 2 2023.
 
The solo pieces on this recording were produced in the resplendent acoustics of the Großer Saal of the Philharmonie Berlin on February 6, 2023. Gerstein delves into Rachmaninoff’s early style through his rendition of Melodie in E major, op. 3 no. 3.  Upon leaving Russia in 1917, Rachmaninoff created several virtuosic arrangements, including the remarkable transcription of Fritz Kreisler’s Liebesleid, performed here by Gerstein. It is worth noting that Rachmaninoff dedicated his final major work for solo piano Variations on a Theme of Corelli to Kreisler, who is believed to have introduced him to the theme. This composition represents the quintessence of Rachmaninoff’s late style, characterised by pared-down textures, more angular rhythms, and a fractured Romanticism that responds to the complexities and contradictions of the modern world that confronted him.
 
Gerstein pays homage to Rachmaninoff’s earlier works in the closing track of the album, through his own arrangement of In the Silence of the Secret Night, the third of the Six Romances Op.4. In his introductory note to the sheet music for this piece, recently published by Faber, Gerstein expresses his admiration for Rachmaninoff’s youthful romanticism and his desire to transform the vocal setting of lines by Afanasy Fet into a purely instrumental work. In doing so, Gerstein pays tribute to the great tradition of transcription established by Liszt, Busoni, and Rachmaninoff himself.