At Sergei Vasilyevich‘s Piano

Facts

Homage to the pianist Sergei V. Rachmaninoff

With Yulianna Avdeeva, Zlata Chochieva and Francesco Piemontesi
Conceived by Jan Schmidt-Garre

In the early 1930s, Sergei Rachmaninoff built a modernist villa on Lake Lucerne. He and his wife Natalia named it Villa Senar after their initials: SeNaR. They moved in on 17 July 1934. The next morning, a gift from Steinway & Sons, Hamburg, was delivered: a customised grand piano made especially for the great composer and pianist.

In this concert film three award-winning pianists of the younger generation play a programme characteristic of the latter-day Rachmaninoff on this grand piano, which seems to retain Rachmaninoff‘s warm, generous sound to this day: works from Bach to Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt right up to the present day of the 1930s including Rachmaninoff's last composition, the ‘Lullaby’ after a song by Tchaikovsky.

• Bach-Rachmaninoff: Violin Partita No. 3 (Chochieva)
• Beethoven: 32 Variations WoO 80 (Avdeeva)
• Schubert: Impromptu op. 90 No. 4 (Piemontesi)
• Mendelssohn-Rachmaninoff: Scherzo from A Midsummer Night‘s Dream (Chochieva)
• Schubert: Three Piano Pieces, No. 3 (Piemontesi)
• Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 (Avdeeva)
• Tchaikovsky-Rachmaninoff: Lullaby op. 16 No. 1 (Chochieva)
• Rachmaninoff: Prelude op. 23 No. 10 (Avdeeva)
• Scriabin: Poème Op. 32 No. 1 (Chochieva)
• Liszt: Transcendental Etudes, No. 12 Chasse neige (Piemontesi)

Cinematography: Diethard Prengel
Sound recording: Clémence Fabre
Editing: Sarah J. Levine
Commissioning editors: Monika Lobkowicz, Arte, Grete Liffers, BR
Producers: Marieke Schroeder and Jan Schmidt-Garre
Director: Jan Schmidt-Garre

A PARS Media production in co-production with Arte Concert, Naxos Audiovisual and the Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation
Supported by the Funk Foundation

Photos

Videos

Francesco Piemontesi plays Liszt‘s » Chasse-neige «, Villa Senar, September 12, 2023