I'm getting ready to perform this piece in a recital, so I've been listening to as many different recordings of it as I can, in order to get a sense of how I should play it. I come across the usual differences you'd expect from one performance to another (stoccato vs. legato, some phrasing issues, tempo) but when I listened to Rachmaninoff's recording, I found one very interesting deviation. In the second beat of the fifth measure, my version (and all other performances I have heard) play A and then C before moving onto the grace notes. Rachmaninoff plays G and then A. I just found this peculiar. There were some other interesting qualities about his playing, but this is the one that stuck out most to me. The thing is, I think it might actually sound better the way he plays it.
Is there some ambiguity as to which are the correct notes? I know that with some scores, there are certain things that can't be authenticated, and we're left with guesses at what is correct or incorrect. Or was it that Rachmaninoff just felt like playing things differently to how they were written? I wouldn't be surprised either way, though it seems to me like he'd be more inclined to follow the score, as any classical musician would.
Of course, I'm also curious about the eighth notes at the beginning of the second and third measures. In some of the recordings I have heard, they're played as stoccatos, in others legato. In my version, they're slurred to the previous tuplet as eigth notes, with an eighth rest afterward. Is there such a variance in scores that they are on some marked as stoccato? That's the only reason I can think of that someone would play them as such.
These sort of inconsistencies interest me, as I try to maximize the quality of every piece I perform by listening to different recordings and trying different ways of playing. Any insight would be helpful.
Topic: Rondo Alla Turca Question