Prelude No. 6 in E‑Flat Major

Rachmaninoff’s Op. 23 preludes marked an outburst of creativity following his marriage to Natalia Satina in 1902. Satina was Rachmaninoff’s first cousin, and the marriage was a small ceremony in a Moscow suburb. Among those in attendance, performing the duties as best man, was his cousin Alexander Siloti, a pianist, conductor and supporter of Rachmaninoff; it is to Siloti that the preludes are dedicated. Musically these pieces look to Chopin for inspiration—Rachmaninoff wrote the set at the same time that he composed his Variations on a Theme of Chopin, based on a theme from his Op. 28 preludes—but as Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in E-Flat Major shows, where Chopin often explores motivic compression, Rachmaninoff has a natural tendency toward melodic and harmonic expansion. In his preludes, Rachmaninoff found free rein with form and an opportunity to write pieces that could freely showcase the pianist’s virtuosity. Marked “Andante”, the Prelude No. 6 is written in variation form—its wistful theme in the right hand sings with an expressive voice above the steady stream of semi-quavers that rise and fall in the left hand. The resulting song without words, with its yearning melody and masterfully decorative accompaniment, is a beguiling example of Rachmaninoff's Romanticism in full bloom. About Rachmaninoff’s Preludes It was in this genre that Rachmaninoff first made his name, with the popular Lisztian Prelude in C-Sharp Minor , Op. 3, No. 2, of 1892. Nearly 10 years on, inspired by Chopin’s Preludes, he returned to the genre to produce his own G-Minor Prelude—another favourite in the Op. 23 set (1901-3). Shortly after writing his Third Piano Concerto in 1909, the composer returned to the genre again, this time to finish the 24. Though not initially conceived as a set of 24, Rachmaninoff does explore contrasts in tempos and moods between preludes, and the last, in the key of D-flat major, is enharmonically related to the C-sharp minor key of the first.