The most original and also wittiest piano concerto by Rachmaninoff is the Rhapsody on a popular Paganini melody. Here, the work is performed by the cult ensemble with Daniil Trifonov on the piano and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. Incidentally, even the genre name "Rhapsody" had to remind every American listener of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", written ten years earlier - a work that the Russian composer greatly admired. Perhaps this is why the tonal languages of the late Rachmaninoff and Gershwin come surprisingly close in some works.
