# Moiseiwitsch’s Rachmaninov: A Reproach to Forgetfulness
It’s extraordinary now to think of a time when a critic—it was Andrew Porter—could call Moiseiwitsch “a neither here nor there artist.” The underestimation, the casual dismissal, the outright contempt into which his reputation sank during his final years should stand as a permanent reproach to those of us who grow jaded with familiar names, bored with aging artists we think we’ve already measured and filed away. One of the very greatest of Leschetizky’s pupils—and that lineage alone should command respect—Moiseiwitsch left recordings that remain among the most rewarding legacies of twentieth-century pianism.
These Rachmaninov performances, recorded between 1937 and 1948, capture him at the height of his powers.
In the First Concerto, Moiseiwitsch’s tonal bloom floods the music with an allure that feels both spontaneous and deeply considered. His lyricism never turns syrupy—there’s always that underlying structural awareness, that sense of the music’s architecture beneath its romantic surface. Dynamism is never in short supply either, and he allies a varied rhythmic palette (listen to how he shapes the subsidiary material in the first movement) with a singing legato and superb passagework to provide a reading worthy of comparison with Rachmaninov’s own. The youthful Philharmonia responds sharply under Sargent, himself a one-time Moiseiwitsch pupil, and the collaboration has that quality of mutual understanding one rarely encounters on records from this period.
The Second Concerto reveals even more. His octave passages in the first movement are splendidly realized—not merely accurate but expressive, each note weighted and voiced within the larger phrase. His rubato exhibits a complex subtlety that sounds inevitable rather than calculated, the kind of temporal flexibility that can’t be taught or analyzed but simply exists as an expression of musical intelligence. Inner voicings show rare imagination: he brings out lines buried in the texture that most pianists either overlook or submerge beneath the melodic surface. And everywhere his tone sings ardently but with eloquent control—never forcing, never hectoring, always serving the music’s expressive needs.
His colourist genius emerges most fully in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a interpretation I prefer to his later traversal. Here impetuosity and scintillating accuracy fuse in common accord. The contours of the music are shaped with unerring judgment; phrasing is very special indeed, particularly in the famous eighteenth variation, where his restraint paradoxically intensifies the emotional impact. Balance between the hands is carefully organized, the left hand bringing out details often overlooked—those chromatic inner voices in Variation VII, for instance, or the contrapuntal intricacies of Variation XXIII.
The transfers are generally good, though there’s some surface noise inevitable in recordings of this vintage. Ward Marston’s work preserves the tonal bloom of Moiseiwitsch’s sound while minimizing the technical limitations of the original 78s. The booklet notes provide adequate context, if not quite enough about the specific disc circumstances.
These are stellar performances, essential documents of a pianistic tradition now vanished. Even if you own Moiseiwitsch’s remakes—and I do—this disc belongs in any serious collection. It reminds us what we’ve lost: not just a great pianist, but an entire approach to this music, one grounded in the late-Romantic tradition yet utterly free of its excesses. A necessary purchase.
