Marik, I love it when you post your recordings. This is a special gift I’m grateful for - I've listened to it twice already.
For some reason I’ve kept myself from knowing the Corelli Variations as I should, even as I’ve had the fortune of being present for several good live performances. What a deep and personal work! I have missed out! But here, at a proper time, is a new beginning for my relationship with this work, and so indeed the heart of Serge Rachmaninov.
Now I think it is infinitely more successful than his Chopin Variations (if such a scale should exist). I wonder if I lacked a certain maturity required to really appreciate this piece; it is serious and runs very deep, very close to Rachmaninov‘s core. I will be meditating on it as if it were a new discovery.
You play so beautifully. I can tell it is no small matter for you to present your programs, that it is no flippant thing, but has disciplined great and careful thought. I appreciate the care with which you present the theme, with the various suspensions given just the right emphasis. I would love to sit in a hall as you play this, and have the tones float over. Throughout there seems to be little sense of the performing mechanism…the music is always out front. If this was a personal work for Rachmaninov, your intimate performance leaves us alone, very close to his heart.
What can be said? I struggle to express what I want to say in words in this short order, and wonder at the necessity of such. It is only an outlet for expression of my gratitude for your beautiful performance, one which stands without the need for words to prop it. You are a special artist, Marik.
Dave