Rachmaninov - Program Note

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18
Composed 1900–01

If Glinka was the first Russian composer of the Romantic era, Rachmaninoff was among the last. A child prodigy and world class composer, pianist, and conductor, he left his native Russia after the revolution in 1917 and lived the rest of his life in Europe and the United States, continuing to compose in his accustomed late Romantic style despite the Modernist trends around him. Tchaikovsky’s profound influence on Rachmaninoff can be heard in the richly expressive melodies, conservative formal structures, and colorful orchestration with which Rachmaninoff developed his unique and distinctive compositional voice.

In 1893, Tchaikovsky heard the twenty- year-old composer’s one-act opera Aleko and expressed his enthusiastic approval, committing to conduct the work himself the following year. Tchaikovsky’s unexpected death prevented this, but Rachmaninoff considered the older composer to be among his most important musical influences. Following the disastrous premiere of Rachmaninoff’s first symphony in 1897 under the incompetent baton of Alexander Glazunov,
the composer suffered a severe bout of depression. After three years spent conducting but not composing, his family prevailed upon him to seek treatment from Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a therapist specializing in hypnosis who was also a highly accomplished amateur musician. Rachmaninoff described his hypnotic experience:

Day after day I heard the same hypnotic formula while I lay half asleep in Dahl’s armchair: ‘You will begin to write your concerto. You will work with great ease.... The music will be excellent.’ Incredible as it may sound, this cure really helped me.

He composed the second and third movements of his Second Piano Concerto in the following months and performed them himself to great acclaim in December 1900. The first movement was added the following year, and he dedicated the work to Dr. Dahl. The concerto has natural ease and beauty and a nuanced emotional narrative, with a darkly tormented first movement, Moderato, the warmly lyrical and poignant second movement, Adagio sostenuto, and the highly virtuosic third movement, Allegro scherzando, with its rapturous second theme. This concerto is an audience favorite not only among Rachmaninoff’s works but in the piano solo literature as a whole.
 

~By Nell Flanders, Assistant Conductor
Princeton Symphony Orchestra