Lucy Parham/Henry Goodman: Cambridge Summer Music Festival

Known internationally for her ‘composer portraits’ in words and music, pianist Lucy Parham has created a new programme for 2017 which chronicles the life of composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. Though he became an exile in 1917, Russia remained deeply rooted in Rachmaninoff’s soul. His cultural identity and longing for his homeland imbue his music, not least the many works he wrote for his own instrument, the piano. The narrative, scripted from letters and diaries, follows Rachmaninoff from his youth in Russia, through his subsequent self-imposed exile in 1917, and finally to California, USA, where he died in 1943.

 

The programme includes many of Rachmaninoff’s best-loved works for solo piano, including a selection of Preludes, Etudes-Tableaux and Moments Musicaux, some of his own transcriptions and the haunting Elégie, as well as works by Scriabin and Tchaikovsky.