Rachmaninoff: Daisies

Written by Harold Meltzer

Composer

In category: Song of the Day

Published July 19, 2016

Okay, perhaps on another beautiful day in Berkshires I shouldn’t wave goodbye so quickly to summer.  Igor Severyanin’s poem beholds daisies in perfect summer bloom, and Rachmaninoff doesn’t hold back.  I got to know the music when I was fourteen, first in the transcription for solo piano that the composer made for himself, and which Morton Estrin, my piano teacher at the time, recorded for Connoisseur Society Records.  But the song is rich and penetrating in ways that leave the piano transcription merely pretty.  I love this performance by a very young Julia Lezhneva.

Rachmaninoff, Daisies, Opus 38, no. 3
Julia Lezhneva, soprano; Michael Antonenko, piano

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Award-winning composer Harold Meltzer “seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution” (Fanfare Magazine).  A longtime friend of NYFOS, his music has been performed in several NYFOS programs and he was featured as a NYFOS Next curator in 2014. Harold is looking forward to the world premiere of his latest work, Variations on a Summer Day, on Sunday, July 24, as part of the Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music.

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