In between writing down his large-scale works for piano, orchestra, chamber music, and even in choral form, Sergei Rachmaninov has also composed handfuls of short works throughout his entire life, especially for piano. While he did start out his pieces with a result of his own favorite composers, Tchaikovsky and Chopin among them, he has slowly but surely evolved his own compositional style. Some of these short pieces are yet to be discovered, some unfortunately lost or destroyed, but nonetheless, the ones that have already been printed out during Rachmaninov's lifetime or after his death do deserve attention. The ones featured here are no exception, his fugues and canons becoming one of the results of his counterpoint classes with his teachers, fellow Russian composers Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev.

One of his earliest works that has survived, overall, is a piano piece in D minor, dated 1884, usually subtitled as "in canonic style". Marked moderato in 12/8 time, it perhaps might be a shock for the audience to notice the difficulty in such an early composition, marked by wide jumps and chords, and an almost-steady stream of octaves towards the end.

Changing from a chaotic mood to a melancholic one, the Canon in E minor of 1890 to 1891 was written as an assignment for Arensky, although the teacher asked him for a fugue (that which he will actually give later on). Two voices, the first one beginning a bar ahead from the second voice a tenth of an interval apart, walk across the piano in Andantino with an accompaniment between them. The second theme in "piu animato" serves almost like the climax, as the voices are separated by an octave and giving the performer another difficulty by adding a bass line for the left hand resulting in wide jumps, before calming down again to transition to the recapitulation of the first theme.

The next one, a fugue in D minor, also dating back as another of Arensky's assignments, has an interesting history. This is a reworking of his "Canonic Piece" mentioned earlier, this time with much more development on the middle section. (More surprisingly, he will later use a part of the middle section in his 4th moment musicaux 5 years later.) Arensky liked the result so much that he himself wrote his own "Fughetta in D minor" on this theme not long after. However, the fugue was never seen again until 2003 when it was rediscovered by Australian pianist Scott Davie while researching Rachmaninoff material at the Library of Congress. It will take 3 years however until Davie is given the ok to record the piece by none other than the composer's great-granddaughter Natalie Wanamaker Javier.

Last but never the least, is a joyful Fughetta in F major composed in 1899, which is supposed to be part of a two-piece piano suite (its companion being a Morceaux de Fantaisie in G minor) but was catalogued separately later on. Marked moderato, the three voices dance around each other on the piano in 6/8 time.

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Please take note that the audio AND sheet music ARE NOT mine. Feel free to change the video quality to a minimum of 480p for the best watching experience.

Performer: Idil Biret (Naxos, 1999), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca, 2014)
Original audio:
[ Ссылка ]
[ Ссылка ]
Original sheet music:
imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Piece_in_D_minor_(Rachmaninoff%2C_Sergei) (Muzgiz, no date)
imslp.org/wiki/Canon_in_E_minor_(Rachmaninoff,_Sergei) (Muzyka, no date)
musescore.com/user/30712651/scores/5756494
imslp.org/wiki/2_Pieces_(Rachmaninoff%2C_Sergei) (Muzyka, no date)

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