Rachmaninov: The Bells; Spring; Three Russian Songs – review

Gianandrea Noseda's Rachmaninov series has regularly disinterred rarities to go alongside the repertory works, and the latest instalment, devoted to choral music and derived from a concert at last summer's Proms, is no exception. The familiar work here is The Bells, the choral symphony based on a Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem, which Rachmaninov completed in 1913. Spring is an early and pallid setting for solo baritone, chorus and orchestra of a poem by Nikolai Nekrasov, with just enough anticipations of the mature composer to make it worthwhile, while the rather slight Three Russian Songs, composed in the US in 1926, sound like what they are, a homesick composer's evocation of a homeland to which he knew he would never return. Noseda shapes both works sympathetically but inevitably responds more vividly to the more expansive canvas of The Bells; all the performances have the benefit of the Russian soloists and the wonderful chorus of the Mariinsky Opera.