Heroes & Villas

Rachmaninov holds a special significance for pianist Alexander Melnikov – a composer whose life bore similarities to his own,

- John-Pierre Joyce

Looking out of the living room window across the shores of Lake Lucerne, surrounded by photographs of family and friends and listening to the piano reverberate from the room next door, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Sergei Rachmaninov was back at his Swiss retreat. But the pianist in the study of the Villa Senar is Alexander Melnikov who, together with soprano Julia Lezhneva, is preparing a recording of Rachmaninov's songs and the Variations on a Theme of Chopin for the Harmonia Mundi label.

Melnikov is only the third musician to be invited to make a recording at the villa on Rachmaninov's piano - a 1933 Steinway D model, given to the composer on his 60th birthday by the manufacturer Frederick Steinway. Back in 1998, Mikhail Pletnev recorded the Variations on a Theme of Corelli, and in 2023 Lukas Geniušas made a premiere recording of Rachmaninov's unpublished Piano Sonata No. 1. For Melnikov, the chance to play and record at the villa is a unique opportunity: 'Of course, it has its own set of challenges in terms of limited space and managing the acoustics. And my relationship with Rachmaninov is somewhat unusual because I'm not regarded as a Rachmaninov specialist. But he is very important for me. His music forms an indispensable part of my musical individuality. And this place is legendary. I remember when I was a boy, still in the Soviet Union, I read a book about Rachmaninov, and there was a photo of the villa. If somebody had told me back then that I would be here, recording on Rachmaninov's piano, I would have been shocked.'

For the recording, Melnikov has put together a programme of lesser-known Rachmaninov works. 'The case of the