Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 04/01/2004, uploaded on 04/16/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The Symphonic Dances, op. 45 was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s last composition. Composed four years after his Third Symphony and completed in 1940, it was written at the Honeyman estate overlooking Long Island Sound, making it the composer’s only composition that was completely composed in the United States. In August of that year, Rachmaninoff wrote to the conductor Eugene Ormandy that the work was complete and only needed to be orchestrated. The orchestration was completed over the next few months and the Symphonic Dances were premiered by Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on January 3^rd, 1941.

While the Dances are examples of Rachmaninoff’s rhythmically animated late style, the work also takes a rather interesting retrospective look at the composer’s entire output, as if he knew, whether consciously or not, that this was to be his final composition. Like in his Third Symphony, he also reminisces fondly of the Russia he had known and was forced to watch die before forever leaving his homeland in the winter of 1917. The first movement, marked Non Allegro, quotes the opening theme of his First Symphony, which in turn was derived from the religious chants he was so fond of. A lively three-note motif opens the piece and is suggestive of the Queen of Shemakha’s theme from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel. The score of this work was the only one by another composer that he left Russia with. The middle section of this movement features the only instance of a solo saxophone, in this case an alto, used in Rachmaninoff’s oeuvre. The middle movement, Andante con moto (Tempo di valse), on the other hand, calls to mind elements of the composer’s own Third Piano Concerto. At first hesitant, the movement settles into a dusky-hued waltz. The initial tentativeness is never completely overcome during the movement, even with its agitated climax just before the close. The music quickly recedes into a quiet ending that seems somewhat timid after such an outburst. Lastly, the finale makes great use of the Dies irae chant, which was also put to marvelous use in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The chant is worked thoroughly throughout the movement and is juxtaposed by a quotation from the ninth movement, "Blessed be the Lord" (Blagosloven yesi, Gospodi), of the composer’s own All-Night Vigil. Death and Resurrection are the two themes represented here, and it is the latter that ultimately is triumphant—Rachmaninoff even wrote “Hallelujah” over the final statement of the theme from All-Night Vigil.       Joseph DuBose