One look at the timings reveals all: at under 50 minutes Marriner makes just about every cut available to him, including—and this is the unkindest of all—the scherzo's glorious second subject repeat. If you love this work as much as I do, you may not wish to read on. You are, after all, spoiled for choice with some 15 available versions at the last count. Litton (Virgin Classics—currently my preferred version), Previn (EMI—something of a classic, but at present only available on cassette), Ashkenazy (Decca), Rozhdestvensky (Pickwick)—each is special, each complete (Litton and Rozhdestvensky even take the lengthy first movement exposition repeat).
I've said this before, but why go to the trouble and expense of recording a piece if one has so little faith in it? Sanctioned or not (and poor Rachmaninov was in no position to be truly objective), these cuts are insupportable: they sabotage the balance, the skilfully modulated ebb and flow of the piece; once you've heard the score in its entirety, they jar like bad tape edits. Marriner has a good orchestra (strings that really reach for their lyrical effusions, a first clarinet worthy of the great slow movement solo); he would appear to have a natural feeling for the throbbing pulse, the internal rubatos of this music, and tempos are well chosen, pliable, purposeful. What a missed opportunity.'