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RACHMANINOFF & PROKOFIEV

Notes on the composers and the pieces

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto No.3

Sergei Prokofiev
Symphony No. 5

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Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was born in Novgorod, Russia to a family of landed aristocrats. Family debt forced their move to St. Petersburg, where Sergei enrolled at the Conservatory. After diphtheria took his sister, and financial stresses separated his parents, he moved to Moscow in 1885 where his teacher, Nikolai Zverev, took him into his home, instilled some discipline, and introduced him to several famous composers, including Pyotr Tchaikovsky, who would later call Anton Arensky, Alexander Glazunov, and especially Rachmaninoff the most promising young Russian composers.

In 1888, Rachmaninoff enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Sergei Taneyev, Anton Arensky, and Alexander Siloti, one of Zverev’s pupils and a noted pedagogue. He graduated as a pianist in 1891 and in composition in 1892. A few of his student works are still performed, including Prince Rostislav, Aleko, Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, and Piano Concerto No. 1.

Rachmaninoff’s career proceeded smoothly until the 1897 premiere of his first symphony was mangled by the conducting of the reportedly inebriated Glazunov. Perhaps unaware of any conducting problem, Cesar Cui publicly called the work an attempt to “describe the seven plagues of Egypt by a graduate of a conservatory from Hell.”¹ The debacle left Rachmaninoff blocked as a composer of large works for three years. Instead he worked and thrived as a pianist and conductor, including a successful conducting stint with Mamontov Opera, a Moscow company that promoted mostly Russian operas.

In 1899 Rachmaninoff’s creative block led him to consult Leo Tolstoy for advice, but the great author had no solution. What did help was hypnosis therapy with neurologist Nikolai Dahl, plus a trip to Italy. The first public sign of recovery was the composer’s performance of his newly completed Piano Concerto No. 2 in early 1901 with Siloti conducting, followed in 1904 by his underrated opera, The Miserly Knight.

Life darkened for Rachmaninoff in 1906 when political turmoil on “Bloody Sunday”² forced him to cancel his obligations and move his family to Dresden, Germany. Three years of tranquility followed during which he enjoyed concerts in Dresden and Leipzig where Arthur Nikisch conducted at the Gewandhaus. He also wrote Piano Sonata No. 1, Isle of the Dead, the first draft of Symphony No. 2, and Piano Concerto No. 3—a grand, large-scale work in which the orchestra plays as big a part as the pianist. Musicologist Harlow Robinson called it the “Mt. Everest of the concerto repertoire” in terms of difficulty. Composer Sergei Prokofiev, an excellent pianist, found it “dry, difficult, and unappealing…[I]n musical circles it finds little affection, and, besides the composer, no one is performing it so far.” That included virtuosos like Arthur Rubenstein, Sviatoslav Richter, and dedicatee Josef Hofmann—who reportedly claimed his hands were too small to play a work written for Rachmaninoff’s large hands.
As Prokofiev noted, it fell to Rachmaninoff to perform the Third successfully, which he did in Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Vladimir Horowitz toured with it and made its first recording. Another advocate was Van Cliburn. Nowadays, the Third is firmly a part of the standard repertoire.

The work opens with an ominous soft figure in the orchestra that gives way to a mysterious Russian-like melody in the piano over a brooding orchestra, which expands on that melody against a long section of decorative passagework from the soloist. The orchestra then plays a warm reflective passage. A subdued march in the orchestra evolves into a quiet section of lyricism and fantasy led by the piano. The march tune is elaborated upon, and the opening music returns followed by passagework in the piano. A cadenza-like passage in the piano gathers power and adds a flowing decorative line. Piano and orchestra build aggressively for a moment, things quiet down, and a variety of emotions follow: quiet, reflective, sad, etc. The music turns dark in the orchestra, and the piano unleashes a wild cadenza that majestically pores over what has passed. A solo flute rises and leads the winds and horn over a short lyrical section over bubbling piano accompaniment followed by another piano cadenza, this one reflective. The opening music returns, the brass enters sternly, and the orchestra pores over earlier material until the piano declares softly and abruptly, “enough.”
The second movement begins with a slow, soulful orchestral prelude. The soloist enters firmly but reflectively and muses with a quiet orchestra. The piano then unleashes an aggressive technical passage while the orchestra goes over some early lyrical ideas. The piano switches to a bubbling technical passage as winds sing earlier melodies in the background. The winds musingly slow things down, the strings pick up on this idea but more passionately until out of nowhere the piano implies “Enough of this” and unleashes s short martial transition. Weighty orchestral chords respond, and the piano plunges into a martial uptempo Finale, as if eager to erase earlier sadness and gloom. Things slow down, and the piano dances with a light fanfarish interlude, alone then with quiet accompaniment in the strings. What seems like a light piano cadenza follows over quiet orchestral accompaniment. A bit of looking back over the past follows at a slower tempo followed by a short timpani roll. The piano takes a yearning look behind, signals “All clear!” and a march breaks out in the orchestra. After an energetic summing up, piano and orchestra gather themselves for an urgent and exuberant conclusion.

—Roger Hecht

Roger Hecht plays trombone in the Mercury Orchestra. He is a former member of Bay Colony Brass (where he was also the Operations/Personnel Manager), the Syracuse Symphony, Lake George Opera, New Bedford Symphony, and Cape Ann Symphony, as well as trombonist and orchestra manager of Lowell House Opera, Commonwealth Opera, and MetroWest Opera. He is a regular reviewer for American Record Guide, contributed to Classical Music: Listener’s Companion, and has written articles on music for the Elgar Society Journal and Positive Feedback magazine. His fiction collection, The Audition and Other Stories, includes a novella about a trombonist preparing for and taking a major orchestra audition (English Hill Press, 2013).

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