Rachmaninov, considered by academics to be a late romantic, often draws on Baroque models: an eclecticism of languages. He experiences music as a memory of affection, and in few places, as here, his insatiable Faustian aspiration to ‘stop the moment’ reaches a similar intensity. Op.19 breathes a sense of a return to life and the otherworldly cello calls shatter according to a principle of hallucinatory suspension which is already the Rachmaninov of the Symphonic Dances, op.45. Piano Sonata no.2 in B flat minor, op.36, had a complex gestation, culminating in a 1931 revision in which the Maestro reduced a certain ‘pleasant storytelling’ in the style of Liszt, moving closer to the neoclassical matrix, but ‘Russian-style’, of his later works.

As an ideal encore, the programme also features the Danse orientale, op.2 no.2, the adolescent Sergei’s homage to that narrative of exotic landscapes, musical scales infused with chromatic enchantments.