5 Morceaux de fantaisie

The towering popularity of the Prelude in C-sharp minor —the first piece that Rachmaninoff composed of the five Fantasy Pieces, Op. 3, and the one that throughout his life he would be asked to play as an encore time and time again—has meant that the Op. 3 works tend to be performed separately. But there’s much to enjoy here besides the prelude's brooding undercurrents and stormy climaxes. Written when the composer was just 19, Op. 3 spans a tremendous breadth of emotions—one that impressed Tchaikovsky when he saw these pieces following their publication in 1893. There’s the opening Élégie, with its gentle arpeggios and deeply melancholic melody; the dreaminess and Romantic yearning of the Mélodie; the playful sforzandos of the Polichinelle, with its expansive lyrical central section; and last, the light and uplifting Sérénade, which Rachmaninoff wrote after he was spurred on by the praise from a newspaper critic, who declared him a standout talent among Russia’s younger generation of composers.