| | Wonderful, wonderful review!
Rachmaninoff has always been my favorite, and his incomparable 3rd Piano Concerto my favorite piece of music. Ever. (In fact, my new bride and I knew we had some soul connection when we discovered that we both felt the same way about it.) The Rhapsody is my second favorite of his work, too: it is the most lighthearted piece of music I know, and like some angel dancing on a cloud, its unforgettable melodies defy all gravity.
Your thoughts about how these might be the inspiration for "Halley's 5th" in Atlas Shrugged are notions I've shared since I was a 19-year-old kid, and was listening to the 3rd Concerto while reading the novel for the first time. The novel and the 3rd are inextricably linked now in my subconscious, and I can't hear those glorious, soaring themes without thinking of scenes and characters from the novel. There's a glorious piano passage in the third movement that sounds like a continuing burst of laughter, with the glittering piano runs tumbling over a hint of minor-key melancholy in the string section, and for the life of me, every time I hear it I can see Francisco d'Anconia.
Thanks for a magnificent review. And please come back here and post frequently.
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