I always want to spell his name with a v or not enough fs. I only just discovered Kirill Gerstein as a pianist and he’s got some really solid opinions on Rachmaninoff which I don’t have the ears to properly understand if we’re quite honest, but I like the way he plays him.
I wonder if it’s frequently artists that felt out of time, as if they were creating things for themselves or in an old fashioned way in their lifetime that I like. Or perhaps it is that I have a weakness for popular artists and who knows if that’s something I should be proud of or not.
I think it’s my connection with possibilities denied that makes me really like Rachmaninoff, I know I was aware of his music before I saw Brief Encounter but I’m not sure where, probably film scores I would imagine or my Mum playing, him though I don’t think she likes him very much. Having listened to Kirill Gerstein talk about him turns out he was a man suffering massively from Depression (escaping from Bolshevik Russia I would imagine does that to a man) and who struggled to finish his pieces.
Maybe I just like popular artists who don’t get the critical acclaim and I have a weakness for the overblown notions of what deep emotion is rather than the edgy version. I don’t know, I like Rachmaninoff.
