b'Program Notescontinuedwhen friends congratulated him on the energy of this music, he said, I dont know how it happenedit must have been my last spark. Two years later he was dead.The orchestral version of Symphonic Dances has become one of the most popular of Rachmaninoffs late works. This concert, however, offers the unique opportunity to hear this music in a version for solo piano. Rachmaninoffs own version for two pianos has become well-known, but it appears that Rachmaninoff also made a version for solo piano. He played this for Ormandy as a way of helping the conductor prepare for the orchestral premiere, and a recording of that session became the inspiration for Inon Barnatans own arrangement of Symphonic Dances (the manuscript of Rachmaninoffs arrangement has not survived). Barnatan has discussed his intentions in making his arrangement for solo piano:I started making my arrangement shortly after we went into lockdown.It has been an arrangement I had wanted to do for a long time, and it was further spurred on by a recording I heard of Rachmaninoff. It is a private recording that only came out a few years ago, and in it he plays through almost the entire piece on one piano for Ormandy. Its an extraordinary document of his playing, and it confirmed my suspicion that it would sound good on one piano. The two-piano version is written in a way that is quite different from his two-piano suites, and much of it is handed from one piano to the other, so some of it was straightforward, but there are many spots where I had to find creative solutions. I heard a saying that translations are like lovers, they are either faithful or beautiful, but I believe in this arrangement that nothing is really lost, and I love the freedom that being able to play it on one piano givesme. The Symphonic Dances are remarkable for Rachmaninoffs subtle compositional method. Rather than relying on the Big Tune, he evolves this music from the most economical of materialsrhythmic fragments, bits of theme, simple patternswhich are then built up into powerful movements that almost overflow with rhythmic energy. Rachmaninoff may have been 67 and in declining strength in 1940, but that summer he wrote with the hand of a master.As he finished each of his symphonies, Joseph Haydn would write Laus DeoPraise Godat the end of the manuscript. At the end of the manuscript of Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoffperhaps aware that this would be his last workwrote (in Russian) the simple phrase: I thank Thee, Lord.~Nell Flanders, Assistant ConductorPrinceton Symphony Orchestraprincetonsymphony.org/ 18'