Rachmaninoff for Two: Babayan in long interview
Sergei Babayan spoke to prestomusic magazine about how the project “Rachmaninoff for Two” (Deutsche Grammophon 2024) surpassed his wildest dreams, two of the pianists who have inspired him in his approach to transcriptions of symphonic repertoire, the early proposed recording of the Suites which was rejected by record executives in the 1930s, and why he believes that teachers often learn just as much from their students as vice versa...
The Beverly Hills party where Rachmaninoff and Horowitz first performed the Symphonic Dances must’ve been quite some evening! Are there really no recordings of the two of them playing together?
Indeed! I remember reading that they really wanted to record the two Suites together, but their record-label RCA had some idiotic board-meeting where they decided it wouldn’t sell very well – can you believe it?! They simply did not vote for Horowitz and Rachmaninoff to record them. But perhaps that stupid commercial director did us a favour in a way, because their recording would have set the bar so high that the pieces would be closed off for everyone else!
“Age doesn’t matter: the musicians who keep growing and developing are the ones who remain students all their lives, even once they’ve become highly respected teachers. Those dry, serious librarian-pedagogue types terrify me – I’m scared of anyone who thinks they know everything!”
I feel like that about quite a lot of pieces. Rachmaninoff, for instance, closed off the Schumann Carnaval for me – I don’t want to hear anyone else play it, and if I do then I invariably think they should have left it alone! Dinu Lipatti did the same with Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, and Martha and Radu Lupu did the same for Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen. When recordings on that level exist you should only throw your hat into the ring if you genuinely have something new, fresh and hypnotising to say about the music: if it’s just going to be another pale copy then why bother?
Read more here.