Dear Gareth,
Sergei Rachmaninoff was almost always asked to play his C#-minor prelude whenever he gave a concert or recital, usually as an encore piece. Later on, after the umpteenth time he had been asked to play the piece, he publicly buried his face in his hands and shook his head.
Bear in mind that he had once attended a recital where Russia's version of Victor Borge (Vladimir de Pachmann) was playing works of different composers. When Vladimir saw Sergei sitting in the middle of the concert hall, he acknowledged him and raised his hands up and then let his hands come crashing down on the opening octaves of the C#-minor prelude and sustained the C# key, grinning maliciously, and then proceeded to execute Chopin's *Fantaisie-Impromptu in C#-minor of which he gave his usual rippling interpretation.
Remember that Rachmaninoff composed the piece at a relatively young age, he later felt the piece to be somewhat *childish*. The C#-minor prelude has also been called the *Moscow Waltz* which alludes to the dour and dire circumstances of Leninist and Stalinist Russia. Vladimir de Pachmann had also joked about the middle section of the prelude in G-minor as alluding to *Bolsheviks Passing in the night, hoping that they would go away soon*. Anyway, good luck in your performance of it - i'm sure you'll do it smashingly well.
Cheers,
Giovanni :tiphat:
