Sergej Rachmaninov: Études Tableaux - Edoardo Brotto

Sergej Rachmaninov - Études Tableaux (CVLD364)

Edoardo Brotto, piano

Available in: HD Files, CD

01 – Op.39 No.1 in C minor, Allegro agitato 3’09”
02 – Op.33 No.3 in C minor, Grave 4’46”
03 – Op.33 No.1 in F minor, Allegro ma non troppo 2’54”
04 – Op.33 No.2 in C major, Allegro 2’31”
05 – Op. 39 No.5 in E♭ minor, Appassionato 5’14”
06 – Op.33 No.5 in E♭ minor, Non Allegro – Presto 1’35”
07 – Op.33 No.7 in G minor, Moderato 3’ 41”
08 – Op.33 No.4 in D minor, Moderato 2’54”
09 – Op.39 No.8 in D minor, Allegro Moderato 3’17”
10 – Op.39 No.2 in A minor, Lento Assai 6’45”
11 – Op.39 No.3 in F# minor, Allegro Molto 2’48”
12 – Op.39 No.6 in A minor, Allegro 2’26”

total time: 42’00”

88kHz / 24bit original digital recording made at M° Edoardo Brotto’s studio, Italy, on the 1^st and 20^th of May 2023.

Analog mix & mastering made at Velut Luna Studio, Valencia, Spain, on the 26^th of August 2023.

M° Edoardo Brotto plays his BECHSTEIN D282 CONCERT GRANDPIANO “ALBUS”, tuned and prepared by Edoardo Brotto.

M° Edoardo Brotto chose Sennheiser MKH 8020, Schoeps CMC6 Mk21, Millennia Media HV 3C and Rupert Neve 5211 Portico Designs mic preamplifiers.

The original master was monitored and personally approved by M° Edoardo Brotto.

INTRODUCTION BY EDOARDO BROTTO

The Études Tableaux, masterpiece miniatures of extraordinary harmonic beauty, form, writing, synthesis, images they evoke, and… of extraordinary musical and technical difficulty. I don't want to add anything else; the music is wonderfully descriptive, and it is right for the listener to create their own worlds and perceive the paintings each piece depicts.
Although the repertoire is well-known to enthusiasts, this is a special album, and contrary to the standard, I will tell you about it in the first person.

I didn't have the courage to play the Études even when I was a full-time pianist, despite having Rachmaninoff's major works under my hands, including his formidable Third Concerto. Instead, I thought about studying and recording them when life became much more complex; engineer by day, pianist by night. I won't lie by saying that reconciling the two is easy; it's not. Playing at a recording level is already a huge challenge, adding a complex everyday job makes it exceptionally demanding. These lines serve as context for the fundamental concept I want to convey to those who read these words: it is possible to set and achieve seemingly impossible goals in an already more than full life. And I say this because it's worth it, whatever you choose. Challenges, won or lost, give us invaluable lessons, first and foremost about ourselves, about our limits which will consistently prove to be wrong, and then they give us a magnificent wave of new, broad-spectrum knowledge. What it takes is a good dose of unwavering will, a predisposition to withstand fatigue, sometimes suffering, and never to be distracted from the primary goal. And one more thing I write: never settle for learning, studying, challenging yourself, improving. Because satisfaction is the death of desire.

Now, regarding the particularities of this album, let's start with the fact that the piano used for the recording is my own: a wonderful Bechstein D282 that I call Albus. A lifelong dream, lasting more than twenty years, has come true. Albus was delivered directly from Berlin this April (2023), and its inauguration was the recording of this album. I personally oversaw the preparation and tuning of the piano for the recording.
Another peculiar fact is that I recorded this album myself. By this, I mean that I personally carried out the work of sound and balance engineer (microphone placement, balancing, acoustic treatment, and recording). I had in mind a recording that would be as faithful as possible to the sound of the instrument, extremely detailed and precise, with particular attention paid to obtaining a perfect sound image. The choice inevitably fell on electronics of absolute excellence, characterized by a linear frequency response and neutral timbre: Sennheiser and Schoeps microphones, omnidirectional and sub-cardioid for great presence and crystalline clarity, Millennia and Rupert Neve preamplifiers that guaranteed the least possible alteration of the native signal, and signal cables worthy of the mentioned components.
This too is the result of years of study, experience, and mistakes; a dutiful thank you goes to the valuable teachings of my producer Marco Lincetto, to whom I then left the finished tracks. Into Marco's expert hands, I entrusted the delicate phase of mixing and mastering, strictly in an analog chain, as I prefer. The result is a recording with a natural and impactful sound that, with a well-constructed system, brings the piano into your home, in all its glory.

Regarding the choice of pieces and their order, for a long time I intuitively imagined this exact sequence. It is a journey of sounds and images that developed in my mind exactly this way, which I particularly love and therefore, would not require further illustration. Nevertheless, I add that as a person who naturally perceives and imagines abstract worlds, beyond the images these picture-pieces evoke, their sequence, to explain it in understandable words, reminds me of a beautiful iteration of sinusoidal functions in three spatial dimensions and one temporal, translatable into a sheet of pure space that moves sinuously, sometimes enveloping you, interspersed with moments of great impetus and others of deep reflection, sometimes dismayed, but in any case intimate. In light of the complete recording, having extracted these twelve pieces in this exact order has only confirmed that intuition I had long ago. I recommend listening straight through to best understand what is written above.

Rachmaninoff and I.
The entire booklet could be dedicated solely to this topic. Simply put, to conclude, his music is my musical soulmate. I have dedicated the last fifteen years to studying and playing his works. His language is so much a part of me that I recorded an entire album (Within & Without – Homage to Rakhmaninov) which collects a series of my original compositions dedicated to the great master. With this one, however, I want to pay tribute to him again by playing his music, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.