UPDATED  6 June 2026

I agree with Gus Cox, the superb Senior Organ Scholar at Trinity College Chapel, where he wrote about this performance:  “Based.”  (Look it up if you don’t know what it means).

I enjoyed this performance of the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by the Trinity College Music Society Orchestra and pianist Peter Ostrovsky at Trinity College Chapel, University of Cambridge in the UK.

The performance was conducted by Thomas Simpson the (equally superb) Junior Organ Scholar at Trinity Chapel.  He also plays the cello and he and Peter gave a cello/piano concert awhile back.

The performance took place in the College Chapel, which is part of the established Church of England/Anglican.

One thing I listen for in this concerto is Rachmaninov’s chromaticism and there’s one place in the winds in the second movement — I think it’s the Principal Clarinet part — where I listen for that, but I didn’t hear it in this performance either.  I don’t hear it in all performances of this piece no matter who is playing it, and Thomas didn’t have that part brought out.  Peter mostly brought out the chromaticism in the piano part.

Also on the programme was the Prokofiev Symphony No. 7.

Interestingly, Peter is also a tenor Choral Scholar in The Trinity Choir. 

I was watching one of their Choral Evensong performances the other day, and my choral friend made the comment about The Trinity Choir, “They have a perfect sound.”  Yes, they do.  They are my favourite.  When I have the time, I do watch a couple of the other Collegiate Chapel Choirs, but Trinity is where I go to first.  And no, I don’t comment (or rarely), in part, because they already know how good they are — or they should — but they never let on that they know how good they are, which is the sign of true artists.  And they don’t need me to write a “review” of every Choral Evensong they perform as some people do on there.  I’m still waiting for the Choir to perform Howells’s anthem, “I Love All Beauteous Things” but it appears I’ll have a long wait on that, even though it’s part of their repertoire.

I normally don’t care what people wear but I especially liked what Peter wore to play the Rachmaninov.  Just a plain shirt and pants.  And that’s all that was needed.  None of that stuffy tux and formal attire nonsense that the classical music tradition and their cultists are so rooted in.  From my own performing experience, of course I’m used to that so I usually just ignore it, but when I see someone like Peter, I find him refreshing and I’m glad that he didn’t care what anyone thought about him not wearing the traditional and terribly tired, cookie-cutter performance attire.

Thomas is getting quite the experience at conducting this term, with this performance and also with doing some conducting with The Trinity Choir.

Peter was trained the same way I was trained from observing his playing.  He plays without any needless theatrics, no profuse sweating getting his hair all wet, and no bouncing around on the piano bench the way many pianists in their 20s and 30s play these days to try to give the impression that what they’re playing is difficult.  One is supposed to make what they’re playing look easy to play, which Peter does.

My choral friend noticed that the piano placement was “out” or outside the Orchestra versus more inside the Orchestra the way it’s done usually in the EU, where the First Concertmaster is directly behind the pianist or slightly to the left of the pianist.  I said:  Oh they’re probably trying to copy the BBC which — for the BBC Proms — sticks the piano outside the Orchestra like a what-not, or at least that was the case the last time I saw a piano concerto performance during the Proms.  But upon reflection, they did have space problems being inside the free-standing Altar area of the Chapel (the free-standing altar had been removed for this performance) and with a large Orchestra, that was probably the only place to position the piano.  They do have the preferred Steinway & Sons Model D piano, commonly used in the EU.  The Model D is made in Hamburg, rather than in the New York factory.

Trinity College — one of 31 Colleges in the University of Cambridge and the wealthiest of all the Colleges — does not have a stand-alone School of Music.  Music is integrated in academia within the College.  From their website:  “The Music Tripos is designed for those interested in music as an academic discipline. Nonetheless, nearly all undergraduates reading music are keen and capable performers, and there are optional courses on instrumental or vocal performance in all three years.”  BTW, the Music building is next door to the Chapel.  That’s convenient for the musicians.  Trinity College is the largest College in Oxbridge.

I’m glad Peter chose the Rachmaninov First rather than Rachmaninov’s  Second or Third Concerto, because the First and Fourth are the least often performed of the Rachmaninov concerti, including the Paganini Rhapsody.

Of this performance Peter says:

“Though I have loved this concerto for a very long time, this was my first time performing it. I learnt the first movement two years ago, but the other two movements were learned in the two months leading up to the concert.”

“Rachmaninov was younger than I am now when he completed the original version of this concerto as a teenager. But he completely revised it in 1917, making it de facto his third, and perhaps most pianistically and harmonically subtle concerto. Though the main themes from the student version were retained, the revised version is otherwise a different work. The result was a unique collaboration between youth and experience, between naivety, energy and technical mastery. I suspect my own playing contributed more of the former two.”

Speaking of the University of Cambridge, I was watching an archive episode of Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life” the other night and Groucho asked one of the contestants where he learned his perfect English, was it at Cambridge or Oxford?  Interesting that he used Oxbridge as his example.  The guy said he learned his English in Brooklyn.  For those interested, “The “Queen’s English” (now the King’s English) and “Oxbridge English” are fundamentally the same and refer to the same prestige dialect, but they highlight different aspects of it. The Queen’s English focuses on the standard accent, while Oxbridge English focuses on the academic style and conventions of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.