Piano Sonata No. 2 in B‑Flat Minor

The opening, cascading statement of the Sonata No. 2 (1913) is enough to tell you that technically this piece is not for fainthearted pianists. But the way this flourishing figuration is later threaded throughout the work also tells you that there’s much more to this sonata than mere empty virtuosity. On the contrary, it is rich in invention—organically conceived, with motifs that appear and reappear in different guises throughout the work. Listen out for the chiming bells of the first and third movements (he wrote his choral symphony The Bells in the same year), or the deeply reflective chant-infused melody of the slow movement: this is a work that is rich in emotion, too. Rachmaninoff wrote the original 1913 version when he was still living in his homeland Russia. Nearly two decades on, after touring in the U.S., he cut the work back, taking a hint from his audiences who had impatiently coughed during his performances of the Variations on a Theme of Corelli in the U.S. that year. (Whenever there was a crescendo of coughing, he would skip the next variation.) Less was evidently more. Though the revised version of the Second Sonata was less prolix, neither works established a place quickly in the repertoire. It was not until the 1940s, when Vladimir Horowitz performed his own version—a combination of the two drafts—that the sonata gained the attention it deserved.