Rachmaninov: Symphony No 3 etc - review

Gianandrea Noseda completes his cycle of Rachmaninov's symphonies for Chandos by pairing the last of them with two rarely heard works from the very beginning of the composer's career. Prince Rostislav is a symphonic poem, written when he was just 18. Based on a ballad by Nikolai Tolstoy and not performed until two years after Rachmaninov's death, it's a perfectly competent piece of orchestral writing. It's more indebted to Tchaikovsky than anyone else, and less revealing of the later composer than the curious Caprice Bohémien, otherwise known as the Capriccio on Gypsy Themes. Completed three years after Rostislav, the Caprice turns out to be a far more darkly coloured, introspective piece than its title suggests: it only becomes extrovert and glitteringly capricious in its final minutes. Both works receive finely detailed, crisp performances from the BBC Philharmonic, but nevertheless it's Noseda's superb account of Rachmaninov's Third Symphony that takes pride of place here – wonderfully restrained, almost haunted in its opening movement; quietly nostalgic in its central Adagio; and almost neurotically hyperactive in its finale.