Prelude in C-sharp minor

Rachmaninoff wrote this at nineteen. Its opening three notes, A, G-sharp and C-sharp spread across the registers like a distant bell, made him famous for life. It was published as the second of his Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3. Audiences would not let a recital end without it, and he came to resent how completely it overshadowed everything else he wrote. The motif tolls through the outer sections, an Agitato storms through the middle, and the return is one massive restatement.

The interpretive task is to make the same three notes mean something different each time they sound, which is a matter of weight and voicing. The middle asks for chordal stamina without tension, the ending for a resonance that feels inevitable. A firm octave technique and some feeling for late-Romantic drama are the prerequisites. Played with imagination it is a miniature piece of theatre. Treat it as a warhorse and it is only noise.

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