Prince Rostislav (Rachmaninoff)
Prince Rostislav (Rachmaninoff)
Prince Rostislav is a symphonic poem by Sergei Rachmaninoff. He wrote it while a student at the Moscow Conservatory, making it one of his earliest surviving orchestral works. The piece is in the key of D minor and lasts about 16 to 20 minutes. It shows a personal, distinctive use of the orchestra and features memorable melodies with evocative textures. The work is based on an 1856 ballad by Aleksey Tolstoy called Prince Rostislav and is dedicated to Anton Arensky, one of Rachmaninoff's teachers.
Rachmaninoff did not arrange for public performance during his lifetime. The first performance of Prince Rostislav, along with another early work, Scherzo in D minor, took place in Moscow on November 2, 1945, conducted by Nikolai Anosoff. The score was published in 1947.
This page was last edited on 27 January 2026, at 21:17 (CET).