Description
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Preface:
Memories of Rachmaninoff’s Georgian Song was written for Rachmaninoff’s sesquicentennial celebrations. It is based on an early song of his, Oh, do not sing for me, Op. 4 No. 4, set to a poem by Pushkin and known as the “Georgian Song.” The song’s expressively winding and melismatic opening, highly reminiscent of Georgian folk music yet an original creation of Rachmaninoff’s, introduces the following verse:
Do not sing for me, my beauty,
Your sad Georgian songs of yore;
For they wake deep from my memory
Another life and a distant shore.
Memories of Rachmaninoff’s Georgian Song is neither an arrangement nor a paraphrase, but rather the musical equivalent of a faint, dreamlike recollection—an allusion to the topic of the original song itself. The work opens with a sparse figuration where strains of the song’s melody are occasionally suggested, as if from far away. A gradual thickening of the texture leads to a more recognizable utterance of Rachmaninoff’s thematic material before the work retreats back into the realm of distant memory.
Nicolas Namoradze
December, 2023
Nicolas Namoradze
Pianist and composer Nicolas Namoradze came to international attention in 2018 upon winning the triennial Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, Canada—among the largest prizes in classical music. His recitals around the globe have been met with universal critical praise, and recent album releases have received extraordinary accolades, including the Choc de Classica, Record of the Month in Limelight, Instrumental Disc of the Month in BBC Music Magazine, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Editor’s Choice in Presto Classical and Critics’ Choice in International Piano.
Among the most critically acclaimed musicians of his generation, Namoradze was bestowed the 2020 & 2021 Young Pianist Award by the UK Critics’ Circle, which called him “very much more than a top-flight pianist.” His current activities include recitals at concert halls including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin and the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan; festival appearances at Tanglewood, Banff, Gstaad, Santa Fe and more; and performances with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Sinfonieorchester Basel, with conductors such as Iván Fischer, Karina Canellakis and Ken-David Masur.
Highlights of his work as a composer include commissions and performances by leading artists and ensembles including Ken-David Masur, Lukas Ligeti, Tessa Lark, Metropolis Ensemble and the Momenta, Verona and Barkada Quartets, at festivals such as the Chelsea Music Festival, Honens Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Portland Piano International and the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, among others. He has also composed and produced a number of film soundtracks, including Walking Painting by Fabienne Verdier and Nuit d’opéra à Aix, made in association with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
After completing his undergraduate in Budapest, Vienna and Florence, Namoradze moved to New York for his master’s at The Juilliard School and his doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center. His teachers and mentors have included Emanuel Ax, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Zoltán Kocsis, Matti Raekallio, András Schiff and Eliso Virsaladze in piano, and John Corigliano in composition. He currently pursues postgraduate studies in neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College, London, where his research interests include the effects of mental practice and mindfulness on musical performance. Namoradze is the author of the book “Ligeti’s Macroharmonies”, published by Springer in the Computational Music Science series.
