Vocalise in E minor Op. 34/14

Rachmaninow added a short, final piece without lyrics to his op. 34 collection of songs, three years after completing the other 13 pieces in 1912: the Vocalise , which quickly became a worldwide success. Since its premiere in 1916, countless arrangements of this melancholic and expressive piece have been disseminated; however, only two were made by Rachmaninow himself, one for voice and orchestra and one for orchestra alone. In the orchestral version, a group of 16 to 20 violins takes over the solo part originally sung. He created this second version while living in exile in Denmark for a short time in 1918, after fleeing Russia. He transposed the piece from C-sharp minor to E minor and developed a completely new orchestration that bears no resemblance to the original version for voice and orchestra.

The primary source for this first Urtext edition of the orchestral version is the first edition published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1919.