Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 05/01/2006, uploaded on 07/01/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

On March 28, 1897, Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony was premiered at one of the Russian Symphony Concerts. Yet, what should have been a resounding success for the composer became instead a crushing failure. Two other pieces were premiered on the same program and the performance of Rachmaninoff’s symphony suffered accordingly. The orchestra’s conductor, Alexander Glazunov, is said to have made poor use of rehearsal time, and, according to some accounts of the concert, was also drunk. Critics panned the work itself, overlooking the many faults that arose from Glazunov’s leadership. Afterwards, Rachmaninoff fell into a deep bout of depression that lasted for the next three years, and during which time he composed very little music. With the help of psychologist Nikolai Dahl, Rachmaninoff eventually regained his confidence and set to work again, composing one of his most enduring compositions, the Second Piano Concerto.

Grateful for Dahl’s therapy sessions, Rachmaninoff dedicated the concerto, completed in April 1901, to him. The second and third movements were performed on December 9, 1900, but the completed concerto was given its official premiere on November 9, 1901 with the composer himself as soloist and the orchestra led by his cousin Alexander Siloti. For the concerto’s first movement, Rachmaninoff adopted, in a Beethovian manner, the tumultuous and strifeful key of C minor. If the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is Fate knocking at the door, then the opening piano chords of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto is its bell-toll. These chords, increasing in tension from the semitone that appears in the second measure, leads into the movement’s rich and powerful first theme, given with the full force of the upper strings and accompanied by dramatic piano arpeggios. More or less conventional in form, the movement’s first theme is answered by the lyrical E-flat major second subject, another of Rachmaninoff’s most well-known melodies. Interestingly, a new melody begins to emerge as fragments of the principal themes are tossed about during the development, but it is not given its full expression until the recapitulation where it appears simultaneously with the first theme. Breaking with a long-standing tradition, no cadenza for the soloists appears before the movement’s coda.

An effective bridge from the passionate first movement to the central Adagio is created by the introduction of chords, allotted to the string section, beginning in the key of previous movement and modulating to E major. Arpeggios for the piano here again accompany the principal melody, heard first in the flute and then again in expanded form by the clarinet. This theme is developed through the course of the movement, and before its reprise, Rachmaninoff relents by finally presenting the much anticipated solo cadenza. In like manner as theAdagio, the orchestra begins the Allegro scherzando finale by leading the listener from E major back to the principal tonic of C. The agitated first theme bears a resemblance in its motivic construction to its counterpart in the first movement, and is likewise answered by a lyrical second subject that is pure Rachmaninoff. After a dramatic development section, Rachmaninoff leads the listener into a rapturous coda that brings the concerto to one of the most triumphal endings in all of music.       Joseph DuBose