Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor proved very popular with the public.\u00a0At times, it was programmed “by request” (1), and if not was freqently expected as an encore.\u00a0In 1922, Rachmaninoff performed in the Queens Hall (London).\u00a0A critic in the Musical Times described the event:<\/p>\n
It was clear that the bulk of those who filled Queen’s Hall at Rachmaninov’s first recital on May 6 came to see the composer of a certain Prelude rather than hear a certain pianist of unusual excellence.\u00a0We felt that Mozart’s Sonata in A, Beethoven’s in E [minor] (Op. 90), a Chopin group, and Mendelssohn’s Andante and Rondo Capriccioso<\/i> were mere preliminaries.\u00a0The real business of the afternoon, we knew, was to come at the end.\u00a0And so it was.\u00a0A batch of pieces in which the pianist figured as composer (a jolly Polka and the Preludes in G flat and B flat) and transcriber (Kreisler’s Liebesleid<\/i> roused the assembled suburbians for the supplementary recital without no occasion of the kind complete.\u00a0Rachmaninov knew what was coming, if his depressed air was any guide.\u00a0He had hardly sunk onto the piano-stool when cries of “C sharp minor!” were fired at him, and he got to work at once, not even making a fresh start when the mob broke in on the opening notes with applause. … More enthusiasm followed, and he continued playing and his admirers went on making noises till the attendents applied the closure by switching off the lights and shutting the pianoforte.\u00a0It would be a great treat to hear this fine and unassuming pianist in a small hall from which all Prelude-maniacs had been barred.<\/p>\n
He gave a second recital on May 20, when Queen’s Hall was again crowded.\u00a0They got that Prelude again!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
(1) Rachmaninoff performed before the Philharmonic Society (England) in 1911 performing his D minor piano concerto.\u00a0The program also included “Prelude in C-sharp minor (by Special Request”).<\/p>\n
Source: Scholes, Percy (1947) The Mirror of Music.<\/i>\u00a0London: Novello.\u00a0vol.1, p.447.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor proved very popular with the public.\u00a0At times, it was programmed “by request” (1), and if not was freqently expected as an encore.\u00a0In 1922, Rachmaninoff performed in the Queens Hall (London).\u00a0A critic in the Musical Times described the event: It was clear that the bulk of those who filled Queen’s Hall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[77,26,76],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-performers-and-performances","tag-c-sharp-minor-prelude","tag-pianist","tag-rachmaninoff"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}