Customer Reviews

Complete Songs for Voice and Piano (Dover Song Collections)

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I generally can't stand Dover editions. The bindings make me crazy! BUT - unlike others, this one actually lays flat on the piano. Only pianists will appreciate how wonderful that is! It's an exact reprint of the Boosey & Hawkes 2 volume set, though significantly cheaper. I have the Boosey & Hawkes, but added this one just to have everything together and because it lays so nicely.

A somewhat carefully made edition, with texts in russian and translated to english and french. Rachmaninoff's songs are of unsurpassed beauty and richness; This "lieds" recquires special skills for the performers; the piano parts are not mere accompanyments, but complex and and difficult in essence. The problem is, although the title of this book says "complete", it is not: some songs, which don't have specific opus numbers, are not in this compilation. The maximum rate is given only because it's... Rachmaninoff.

Rachmaninoff has composed some of the most beautiful songs in existence, but these treasures are largely untouched, save for his Vocalise (Op.34 No.14), and maybe Op.4 No.4 and Op.21. No.7. This is a shame, considering that there are many treasures available in his collection of songs.

Interestingly, the "cycles" or groups of songs are not the same cycles that we find in the works of other composers. Rachmaninoff has set up these Opus numbers to contain songs for each of the main voice types, and therefore, the cycles are either meant to be sung by multiple vocalists, or are not intended to be sung in a sequence.

Any way that you choose to study and Perform Rachmaninoff song repertoire, you cannot go wrong. The challenges of this series goes beyond the difficulty of the rarely-sung Russian language. The ranges are often astonishingly challenging, with the climax being held for at least a value of a half-note.

I would only improve this book by providing IPA or other phonetic aids to the text. And, of course, I always like to see accompaniment provided on CD with repertoire books, since I am a lousy pianist!

Yes, it's a pity that the 14 or so songs without opus-numbers aren't included. Presumably that's because they were published later than the others (after his death) and thus not allowed to be reprinted here (as not being part of the 2-volume Boosey & Hawkes edition printed earlier) - if the copyright period be 75 years after his death (it used to be 50 but has apparently been changed...), that would explain it...

Otherwise, it's a thoroughly lovely book: not only is Rakhmáñinov so outstanding as a lieder composer (and the accompaniments are no less gorgeous to play as the vocal-parts to sing!!); to boot, the book not only opens well, it's also a perfect size (too many vocal-scores and songbooks are of a reduced size compared to instrumental-only publications!)! Furthermore, the fonts and layout of the pages (unlike a few of Dover's other offerings, where the original engraving was a bit too ornate or less than pristine) both contribute to a stellar, easy-to-read product. It's an absolute MUST-BUY!!!

The book is well done, very nice material and confortable to reading the music for piano and voice.
The cyrillic words allow to improve to the singer in the studing of russian language, and in the same time the english words to understand completely the sense of singing.

Shipping was fast for USPS, and the book arrived in pristine condition. The book indexes songs by opus number and even range (on the back page), which is useful since Rachmaninoff did not create cycles intended for a single voice type. As was said before, the book also lies out well on a piano, helpful for plucking things out should the need arise. Print is clear as well.