Piano Concerto No. 4 (Rachmaninoff)
Encyclopedia
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor
, Op. 40 is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff
, completed in 1926. The work currently exists in three versions. Following its unsuccessful premiere he made cuts and other amendments before publishing it in 1928. With continued lack of success, he withdrew the work, eventually revising and republishing it in 1941. The original manuscript version was released in 2000 by the Rachmaninoff Estate to be published and recorded. The work is dedicated to Nikolai Medtner
, who in turn dedicated his Second Piano Concerto to Rachmaninoff.
and the recomposed First
Concertos were less heavily orchestrated than the Second
. In keeping with its general character, the Fourth is lighter still yet more oblique.
The concerto is written in three movements
:
Rachmaninoff had already been making a more extensive use of short thematic motifs and strong rhythmic patterns in his Op. 32 Preludes in place of what was called the "unmentionable restlessness" that made his work, especially the concertos, a distressing experience for some musicians. This refinement of musical language, especially in orchestration, went back at least to The Bells
and a more astringent tone was already noticeable in songs like "The Raising of Lazarus", Op. 34, No. 6.
. Even if he did not like at least some of what he heard, he was at least aware of what Bartók
, Hindemith
, Stravinsky
, Schoenberg
and Les six
were writing. Even before the Revolution, in 1916, Russian critic Leonid Sabaneyev
noticed a change in Rachmaninoff's style when the composer played eight of his nine Op. 39 Études-Tableaux:
Other critics also noticed there is a new angularity and pungency in these études, along with a more severe, concentrated and deepened mode of expression. This was influenced in part by his study of Scriabin
's music for the memorial recitals he played in 1915; this study would bear further fruit in the works he would write after leaving Russia.
Had Rachmaninoff stayed in Russia and the Bolsheviks' rise to power never taken place, the Fourth Piano Concerto probably would have been premiered around 1919, eight years earlier than its actual unveiling. It is also possible that in the fertile creative ground of the composer's estate of Ivanovka, where many of his major pieces grew to fruition, the concerto might have become a wholly different composition, albeit likely one no less adventurous than what eventually came forth.
's Rhapsody in Blue
, a piece for piano and orchestra completed in 1924, only three years before Rachmaninoff finished his own. His presence at the premiere of the Gershwin Rhapsody on February 12, 1924 is well known. Sometimes less remembered is that he was a faithful and longtime enthusiast of Paul Whiteman
's jazz orchestra, which hosted the premiere, even sending his daughter the Whiteman orchestra's newest records every month. He also listened to orchestral jazz
by both the black jazz orchestras then playing regularly in New York—those of Fletcher Henderson
and Duke Ellington
—and would later become a devoted enthusiast of pianist Art Tatum
. Tenor John McCormack remembered Rachmaninoff himself playing jazz for his own amusement.
These jazz elements, most felt, were not consistent with Rachmaninoff's previous brooding and dark themes. What they failed to realize was that, though some aspects of the concerto had their roots in Imperial Russia, the piece had been written mainly in New York and finished in Western Europe. The composer was a sharp, intelligent and sensitive man who had naturally been affected by the sights and sounds of the country in which he had resided for the last several years. Any romantic aura had long dissipated.
s. Like most of Rachmaninoff's late works, the concerto has a daring chromaticism
and a distinctive jazz
y quality.
, Sweden, never to return. Life as an émigré with a wife and two daughters to support meant that composition was out of the question, at least for a while. He also needed time to renew himself. Rachmaninoff had composed intensely during much of his career in Russia. Aside from the requirements of his pianistic career, it may have been more dignified for Rachmaninoff to endure a period of creative silence than to merely repeat what he had written before. If his subsequent compositions were to be relevant to his new situation, he needed time to learn and explore the parameters of what that situation actually was.
In Dresden
, where he had done much composing in the past, Rachmaninoff began to think specifically about composing again. He then wrote his friend and fellow exile Nikolai Medtner
, "I've already started to work. Am moving slowly." After eight years of touring, he took a sabbatical at the end of 1925, working on the Fourth Concerto. He may have begun this work as early as 1911: the end of the slow movement from rehearsal number 39 has in the orchestral part the same nine-bar passage as the Etude-Tableau, Op. 33/3 from bar 20. This Etude-Tableau derives from the year 1911 and was pulled from the advertised publication in 1914. In fact it was not at all published during Rachmaninoffs lifetime. The April 12 issue of Muzyka points to the year 1914: While Rachmaninoff had gone to Ivanovka earlier than usual that year, in March, he did not return to Moscow that October with a finished composition, which was his usual custom. All he reportedly had were three sketch books and various separate sheets of manuscript paper. The composer brought this material with him from Russia in 1917; it is now housed in the Library of Congress
. He may have also tinkered with sketches in his early years in the United States. Although composition at that time was for the most part out of the question, sketches for the finale of the concerto are on the back of the manuscript sheets of his cadenza
for Liszt
's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
. These sheets are also at the Library of Congress.
Though he made a good start on the piece, he was also interrupted numerous times—not the least of which being the sudden death of his son-in-law, who had been married to his daughter Irina less than a year. With this tragedy and other challenges which arose, Rachmaninoff did not finish the work until the end of the following August. On top of this, Rachmaninoff's normally self-critical tendencies started working overtime. He complained to Medtner on September 8 of the size of the score (110 pages) and that it "will have to be performed like The Ring
: on several evenings in succession." Medtner replied five days later that he could not agree with Rachmaninoff about the concerto being too long or about his general attitude about length. "Actually, your concerto amazed me by the fewness of its pages, considering its importance. ... Naturally, there are limitations to the lengths of musical works, just as there are dimensions for canvasses. But within these human limitations, it is not the length of musical compositions that creates an impression of boredom, but it is rather the boredom that creates the impression of length." The pianist Josef Hofmann, another friend to whom he showed the score, also encouraged him, saying he liked the new concerto very much and hoped that, while its frequent metric changes might make playing the piece with an orchestra difficult, it would not prove an obstacle to future performances. "It certainly deserves them from a musical as well as a pianistic point of view."
Rachmaninoff saw two specific problems with the work: the third movement, which he found too drawn out, and the fact that the orchestra is almost never silent throughout the piece (although the latter tendency is fully in evidence in the composer's Second Concerto, as well). He concluded that he would have to make cuts in the score. Rachmaninoff had made changes to works in the past, after he had heard or performed them. Along with his having been away from the composer's desk for several years, this insecurity in deciding how his ideas should be expressed may account for what some critics considered the fractured nature of the Fourth when they heard it.
The concerto was premiered in Philadelphia on March 18, 1927, with the composer as soloist and Leopold Stokowski
leading the Philadelphia Orchestra
. After a second performance on March 19, Rachmaninoff performed the work with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York on March 22. The Three Russian Songs
, Op. 41, for chorus and orchestra were also given their first three performances on these same occasions; the Three Russian Songs were favourably received each time, the concerto less so.
in 1897. In some ways, this should have been expected, especially by the composer. It can easily be compared to reaction to the late works of Debussy
, Fauré
and Roussel
. These men, like Rachmaninoff, had been labeled as conservatives. They all made subsequent developments wholly integral to their compositional styles which were considered by critics as a weakening of creative power rather than as a refinement of it. Moreover, Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto
was panned initially for not being a near-copy of its predecessor. Together, these two pieces gave the impression of a compositional norm from which Rachmaninoff was not expected to depart. At the same time, the romanticism of these works would have been fatuous in light of what people like Rachmaninoff had recently gone through before leaving Russia.
In any case, Lawrence Gilman
, who had written the program notes for the concerto, complained in the Herald Tribune of "thinness and monotony" in the new work, that it was "neither so expressive nor so effective as its famous companion in C minor". Pitts Sanborn
of the Telegram called the concerto "long-winded, tiresome, unimportant, in places tawdry", describing it as "an interminable, loosely knit hodge-podge of this and that, all the way from Liszt
to Puccini
, from Chopin
to Tchaikovsky
. Even Mendelssohn
enjoys a passing compliment." After stating the work glittered "with innumerable stock trills and figurations" and the orchestration was as "rich as nougot", he called the music itself "now weepily sentimental, now of an elfin prettiness, now swelling toward bombast in a fluent orotundity. It is neither futuristic music nor music of the future. Its past was a present in Continental capitals half a century ago. Taken by and large—and it is even longer than it is large—this work could fittingly be described as super-salon music. Mme. Cécile Chaminade
might safely have perpetrated it on her third glass of vodka
."
The relative modernity of the Fourth Concerto as presented in 1927 did not stem primarily from a higher level of dissonance
compared to the Second and Third Concertos but from its inherent compositional attitude. Its formal structures were more elliptical than those of its predecessors. Its musical statements shifted more, were less direct. The elusiveness of some themes was heightened by the overt directness of others. Had the recomposed version of Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto
been better known at that time—the last major work the composer had finished before leaving Russia and one that some critics have suggested should be considered the actual Third Concerto , with its occasional brusqueness and abrupt transitions—listeners would have been better prepared to know what to expect. Nevertheless, while the concerto contained much that was new, it just as fully followed on from what had been done before. Therefore, it should have been exactly what was expected.
Pianists Vladimir Ashkenazy
and Yevgeny Sudbin
and biographer Max Harrison have argued that, as with his Second Piano Sonata
, Rachmaninoff got everything about the Fourth Concerto right the first time. They find it extremely disappointing that he yielded to adverse opinion, repeatedly making changes weakening what had initially been a powerfully original work. While these revisions might imply an undue willingness to compromise, the motivation for making those changes may have been incomprehension. Rachmaninoff himself may simply have not fathomed the true nature of this composition, especially when it was first performed. Musicologist Geoffrey Norris, in contrast, argued that Rachmaninoff did not go far enough in his revisions. He claimed that had Rachmaninoff tackled the basic structural deficiencies of the work, it might have been received more sympathetically than it actually was.
, he put off going over the score until 1941, 15 years after initially completing it. It thus became the last original composition on which he worked. While not changing the basic thematic material, Rachmaninoff revised the orchestration, simplified the piano writing in the central largo, and thoroughly overhauled the finale. He also made cuts additional to the ones he had made in 1928. He reduced the first movement from 346 to 313 bars, the slow movement from 80 to 77 bars and, most invasively, the finale from 476 to 434 bars. This brought the complete work from 902 to 824 bars. He also recast much of the music to dispense with unnecessary themes and create a more compact structure.
That fall, Rachmaninoff premiered the revised Fourth, again in Philadelphia but with Eugene Ormandy
conducting. Edwin Schloss wrote in his review for The Philadelphia Record
,
Ormandy and Rachmaninoff played the revised Fourth, with the Second Symphony
, in Washington
, Baltimore
, and eventually New York
, as well as recording the work for RCA
. Still, Rachmaninoff was never fully satisfied with the work, continuing to tinker with the orchestration even in the days immediately before his recording session with Ormandy, and lamenting that he did not find the time to reorchestrate the piece to his satisfaction. Many of these changes never found their way into the printed score; however, they have made it onto recordings by other pianists who have studied the composer's own recording, including Vladimir Ashkenazy
, Stephen Hough
, Leonard Pennario
and Earl Wild
.
Whatever might be thought about the 1941 revision, there is an elimination of rhetoric and ornamentation. Moreover, there is a sharper demand on involvement from the soloist than in some parts of the Third Concerto. The exposition of the finale is an especially fine instance of the architectural quality of rhythm
in the performance of this work. Altogether, the immense virtuosity of the finale on the whole is not showy passagework to please audiences. It is hectic, full of action, unstoppable in its energy and power.
, with the expert assistance of Robert Threlfall and Leslie Howard
, to publish the uncut 1926 manuscript version of the Fourth Concerto. Ondine Records recorded the work with pianist Alexander Ghindin and the Helsinki Philharmonic under Vladimir Ashkenazy
. The publication of the uncut manuscript drew considerable interest because Rachmaninoff's alterations of the Second Symphony
and Second Piano Sonata
in the 1930s were actually detrimental to those pieces. Rachmaninoff's changes in those works included large cuts, a number of minor textural rewritings, and a few newly composed segments to attempt cementing a fragmented structure. Access to the manuscript of the Fourth Piano Concerto could therefore show what the composer may have initially had in mind, structurally speaking, and what he might have obfuscated in the process of revision.
In an interview with Elger Niels, Ashkenazy called the manuscript version much closer to the Third Piano Concerto
than to its subsequent revisions. After studying all three versions, conducting two and playing one, Ashkenazy concluded that, in principle, he preferred the manuscript edition. His main reason for this was that the Finale worked much better in the manuscript version, since the second subject is repeated. Even so, he does not consider the movement an unqualified success:
The manuscript version reveals a more violent set of musical contrasts. Especially in the Finale, these juxtapositions result in some strident episodes absent from either of the revisions. Because of Rachmaninoff's removal of these contrasts, writer Elger Niels called the manuscript version a missed culmination in Rachmaninoff's development. Instead, Rachmaninoff started writing in clearer musical forms, like those in the Third Symphony
and Symphonic Dances
.
Also, in the Finale, the appearance of the Dies Irae
is not a cause of fright or dread. Instead it prominently heads the second subject, which in both musical gesture and Dies-Irae-related content greatly resembles the triumphant second subject from the Finale of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony. While this similarity may not have been intended, a reference to the coda from The Bells
at the end of the Finale's exposition section may be more deliberate. None of these instances were left in the composer's 1941 edition.
While the Black/Buketoff recording is the only commercial recording of the complete 1928 version, a single movement, the third, has been recorded by pianist Mikhail Rudy
and Mariss Jansons
conducting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Furthermore, there exist two non-commercial recordings of the 1928 version at the International Piano Archives of the University of Maryland: a live performance from May 3rd, 1973 by pianist Gunnar Johansen with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Jorge Mester in Indianapolis as part of the Butler University Romantic Music Festival (Johansen had performed the concerto with success in 1934 with Dr. Stock and the Chicago Symphony), as well as a November 12th, 1939 recording of a Radio City Music Hall broadcast of the concerto performed by pianist Henrietta Schumann and the Radio City Orchestra conducted by Erno Rapee, apparently the first recording of this work, which even predates Rachmaninoff's own 1941 recording of the final version. The Henrietta Schumann recording comprises five sides of three 78 rpm instantaneous discs which have been transferred to cd format by the International Piano Archives at Maryland which has taken the opportunity to reduce the surface noise and correct the playback pitch, although some portions of the work are missing due to recording with only one disc-cutting lathe.
G minor
G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. For the harmonic minor scale, the F is raised to F. Its relative major is B-flat major, and its parallel major is G major....
, Op. 40 is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, completed in 1926. The work currently exists in three versions. Following its unsuccessful premiere he made cuts and other amendments before publishing it in 1928. With continued lack of success, he withdrew the work, eventually revising and republishing it in 1941. The original manuscript version was released in 2000 by the Rachmaninoff Estate to be published and recorded. The work is dedicated to Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer and pianist.A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano...
, who in turn dedicated his Second Piano Concerto to Rachmaninoff.
Form
Compared to its predecessors, the Fourth contains sharper thematic profiles along with a refinement of textures in keyboard and orchestra. These qualities do not lead to greater simplicity but to a different sort of complexity. It was also a continuation of Rachmaninoff's long-range creative growth. The ThirdPiano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, composed in 1909 by Sergei Rachmaninoff is famous for its technical and musical demands on the performer...
and the recomposed First
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, in 1892, at age 19. He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti. He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.-First version:...
Concertos were less heavily orchestrated than the Second
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
. In keeping with its general character, the Fourth is lighter still yet more oblique.
The concerto is written in three movements
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
:
- Allegro vivace (G minor)
- Largo (C major)
- Allegro vivace (G minor → D-Flat Major → G major)
Rachmaninoff had already been making a more extensive use of short thematic motifs and strong rhythmic patterns in his Op. 32 Preludes in place of what was called the "unmentionable restlessness" that made his work, especially the concertos, a distressing experience for some musicians. This refinement of musical language, especially in orchestration, went back at least to The Bells
The Bells (Rachmaninoff)
The Bells , Op. 35, is a choral symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff, written in 1913. The words are from the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, very freely translated into Russian by the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. The traditional Gregorian melody Dies Irae is used frequently throughout the work...
and a more astringent tone was already noticeable in songs like "The Raising of Lazarus", Op. 34, No. 6.
Influences
Modern classical music
What Rachmaninoff heard around him proved that politics was not the only thing that had changed since the October RevolutionOctober Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. Even if he did not like at least some of what he heard, he was at least aware of what Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and Les six
Les Six
Les six is a name, inspired by The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet in an article titled "" to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music.-Members:Formally, the Groupe des...
were writing. Even before the Revolution, in 1916, Russian critic Leonid Sabaneyev
Leonid Sabaneyev
Leonid Leonidovich Sabaneyev or Sabaneyeff or Sabaneev was a Russian musicologist, music critic, composer and scientist.-Biography:...
noticed a change in Rachmaninoff's style when the composer played eight of his nine Op. 39 Études-Tableaux:
This great talent is now in the period of search. Evidently the individuality originally formed by the composer (the culmination of which I consider to be the extraordinary Second Concerto) has for some reason ceased to satisfy the composer.
The searches of a great talent are always interesting. Although personally I cannot consider Rachmaninov a musical phenomenon of the highest order … nevertheless one senses in him a tremendous inner power, a potentiality that some barrier prevents from emerging fully … his artistic personality contains the promise of something greater than he has yet given us.
Other critics also noticed there is a new angularity and pungency in these études, along with a more severe, concentrated and deepened mode of expression. This was influenced in part by his study of Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
's music for the memorial recitals he played in 1915; this study would bear further fruit in the works he would write after leaving Russia.
Had Rachmaninoff stayed in Russia and the Bolsheviks' rise to power never taken place, the Fourth Piano Concerto probably would have been premiered around 1919, eight years earlier than its actual unveiling. It is also possible that in the fertile creative ground of the composer's estate of Ivanovka, where many of his major pieces grew to fruition, the concerto might have become a wholly different composition, albeit likely one no less adventurous than what eventually came forth.
Jazz
Many have noted Rachmaninoff's inspiration from George GershwinGeorge Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
's Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects....
, a piece for piano and orchestra completed in 1924, only three years before Rachmaninoff finished his own. His presence at the premiere of the Gershwin Rhapsody on February 12, 1924 is well known. Sometimes less remembered is that he was a faithful and longtime enthusiast of Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...
's jazz orchestra, which hosted the premiere, even sending his daughter the Whiteman orchestra's newest records every month. He also listened to orchestral jazz
Orchestral jazz
Orchestral jazz is a jazz genre developed in the United States in the 1920s, most significantly by Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington.As early as the 1910s there had been dance orchestras playing the popular songs of the day along with a smattering of jazz...
by both the black jazz orchestras then playing regularly in New York—those of Fletcher Henderson
Fletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...
and Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
—and would later become a devoted enthusiast of pianist Art Tatum
Art Tatum
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...
. Tenor John McCormack remembered Rachmaninoff himself playing jazz for his own amusement.
These jazz elements, most felt, were not consistent with Rachmaninoff's previous brooding and dark themes. What they failed to realize was that, though some aspects of the concerto had their roots in Imperial Russia, the piece had been written mainly in New York and finished in Western Europe. The composer was a sharp, intelligent and sensitive man who had naturally been affected by the sights and sounds of the country in which he had resided for the last several years. Any romantic aura had long dissipated.
Overview
The concerto is probably the least known of all Rachmaninoff's piano concertos, but it is frequently performed in Russia. There may be several reasons for this. The structure was criticized for being amorphous and difficult to grasp on a single hearing. Only the second movement (Largo) contains a prominent melody, while the external movements seem to be composed mainly of virtuosic piano runs and cadenzaCadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
s. Like most of Rachmaninoff's late works, the concerto has a daring chromaticism
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...
and a distinctive jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
y quality.
Composition
Rachmaninoff left Russia with his family on December 23, 1917 for a concert date in StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden, never to return. Life as an émigré with a wife and two daughters to support meant that composition was out of the question, at least for a while. He also needed time to renew himself. Rachmaninoff had composed intensely during much of his career in Russia. Aside from the requirements of his pianistic career, it may have been more dignified for Rachmaninoff to endure a period of creative silence than to merely repeat what he had written before. If his subsequent compositions were to be relevant to his new situation, he needed time to learn and explore the parameters of what that situation actually was.
In Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, where he had done much composing in the past, Rachmaninoff began to think specifically about composing again. He then wrote his friend and fellow exile Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer and pianist.A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano...
, "I've already started to work. Am moving slowly." After eight years of touring, he took a sabbatical at the end of 1925, working on the Fourth Concerto. He may have begun this work as early as 1911: the end of the slow movement from rehearsal number 39 has in the orchestral part the same nine-bar passage as the Etude-Tableau, Op. 33/3 from bar 20. This Etude-Tableau derives from the year 1911 and was pulled from the advertised publication in 1914. In fact it was not at all published during Rachmaninoffs lifetime. The April 12 issue of Muzyka points to the year 1914: While Rachmaninoff had gone to Ivanovka earlier than usual that year, in March, he did not return to Moscow that October with a finished composition, which was his usual custom. All he reportedly had were three sketch books and various separate sheets of manuscript paper. The composer brought this material with him from Russia in 1917; it is now housed in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. He may have also tinkered with sketches in his early years in the United States. Although composition at that time was for the most part out of the question, sketches for the finale of the concerto are on the back of the manuscript sheets of his cadenza
Cadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
for Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, S.244/2, is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt, and is by far the most famous of the set. Few other piano solos have achieved such widespread popularity, offering the pianist the opportunity to reveal exceptional skill as a virtuoso,...
. These sheets are also at the Library of Congress.
Though he made a good start on the piece, he was also interrupted numerous times—not the least of which being the sudden death of his son-in-law, who had been married to his daughter Irina less than a year. With this tragedy and other challenges which arose, Rachmaninoff did not finish the work until the end of the following August. On top of this, Rachmaninoff's normally self-critical tendencies started working overtime. He complained to Medtner on September 8 of the size of the score (110 pages) and that it "will have to be performed like The Ring
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
: on several evenings in succession." Medtner replied five days later that he could not agree with Rachmaninoff about the concerto being too long or about his general attitude about length. "Actually, your concerto amazed me by the fewness of its pages, considering its importance. ... Naturally, there are limitations to the lengths of musical works, just as there are dimensions for canvasses. But within these human limitations, it is not the length of musical compositions that creates an impression of boredom, but it is rather the boredom that creates the impression of length." The pianist Josef Hofmann, another friend to whom he showed the score, also encouraged him, saying he liked the new concerto very much and hoped that, while its frequent metric changes might make playing the piece with an orchestra difficult, it would not prove an obstacle to future performances. "It certainly deserves them from a musical as well as a pianistic point of view."
Rachmaninoff saw two specific problems with the work: the third movement, which he found too drawn out, and the fact that the orchestra is almost never silent throughout the piece (although the latter tendency is fully in evidence in the composer's Second Concerto, as well). He concluded that he would have to make cuts in the score. Rachmaninoff had made changes to works in the past, after he had heard or performed them. Along with his having been away from the composer's desk for several years, this insecurity in deciding how his ideas should be expressed may account for what some critics considered the fractured nature of the Fourth when they heard it.
The concerto was premiered in Philadelphia on March 18, 1927, with the composer as soloist and Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
leading the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
. After a second performance on March 19, Rachmaninoff performed the work with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York on March 22. The Three Russian Songs
Three Russian Songs, Op. 41 (Rachmaninoff)
The Three Russian Songs, Op. 41 for chorus and orchestra were written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1926. It is the last of Rachmaninoff's three works for chorus and orchestra, the others being the cantata Spring, Op. 20 , and the choral symphony The Bells, Op. 35...
, Op. 41, for chorus and orchestra were also given their first three performances on these same occasions; the Three Russian Songs were favourably received each time, the concerto less so.
Reception
Critical reaction was universally scathing, prompting the most vitriolic reviews Rachmaninoff had received since the premiere of his First SymphonySymphony No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)
Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13, is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, written at Ivanovka, an estate near Tambov, Russia, between January and October 1895...
in 1897. In some ways, this should have been expected, especially by the composer. It can easily be compared to reaction to the late works of Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Fauré
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
and Roussel
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...
. These men, like Rachmaninoff, had been labeled as conservatives. They all made subsequent developments wholly integral to their compositional styles which were considered by critics as a weakening of creative power rather than as a refinement of it. Moreover, Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, composed in 1909 by Sergei Rachmaninoff is famous for its technical and musical demands on the performer...
was panned initially for not being a near-copy of its predecessor. Together, these two pieces gave the impression of a compositional norm from which Rachmaninoff was not expected to depart. At the same time, the romanticism of these works would have been fatuous in light of what people like Rachmaninoff had recently gone through before leaving Russia.
In any case, Lawrence Gilman
Lawrence Gilman
Lawrence Gilman was a U.S. author and music critic.Lawrence Gilman was the son of Arthur Coit Gilman and Bessie Gilman, and the grandnephew of educator Daniel Coit Gilman. Lawrence Gilman studied art at Collins Street Classical School in Hartford, Connecticut under William M. Chase...
, who had written the program notes for the concerto, complained in the Herald Tribune of "thinness and monotony" in the new work, that it was "neither so expressive nor so effective as its famous companion in C minor". Pitts Sanborn
Pitts Sanborn
Pitts Sanborn was music critic for The New York Globe and then the New York World Telegram.He also write books such as The Metropolitan Book of the Opera, Prima Donna : A Novel of the Opera, Ludwig van Beethoven....
of the Telegram called the concerto "long-winded, tiresome, unimportant, in places tawdry", describing it as "an interminable, loosely knit hodge-podge of this and that, all the way from Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
to Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
, from Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
to Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
. Even Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
enjoys a passing compliment." After stating the work glittered "with innumerable stock trills and figurations" and the orchestration was as "rich as nougot", he called the music itself "now weepily sentimental, now of an elfin prettiness, now swelling toward bombast in a fluent orotundity. It is neither futuristic music nor music of the future. Its past was a present in Continental capitals half a century ago. Taken by and large—and it is even longer than it is large—this work could fittingly be described as super-salon music. Mme. Cécile Chaminade
Cécile Chaminade
Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade was a French composer and pianist.-Biography:Born in Paris, she studied at first with her mother, then with Félix Le Couppey, Marie Gabriel Augustin Savard, Martin Pierre Marsick and Benjamin Godard, but not officially, since her father disapproved of her musical...
might safely have perpetrated it on her third glass of vodka
Vodka
Vodka , is a distilled beverage. It is composed primarily of water and ethanol with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits....
."
The relative modernity of the Fourth Concerto as presented in 1927 did not stem primarily from a higher level of dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
compared to the Second and Third Concertos but from its inherent compositional attitude. Its formal structures were more elliptical than those of its predecessors. Its musical statements shifted more, were less direct. The elusiveness of some themes was heightened by the overt directness of others. Had the recomposed version of Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, in 1892, at age 19. He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti. He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.-First version:...
been better known at that time—the last major work the composer had finished before leaving Russia and one that some critics have suggested should be considered the actual Third Concerto , with its occasional brusqueness and abrupt transitions—listeners would have been better prepared to know what to expect. Nevertheless, while the concerto contained much that was new, it just as fully followed on from what had been done before. Therefore, it should have been exactly what was expected.
More cuts
Rachmaninoff became discouraged by the Fourth Concerto's lack of success, in both its original and its revised forms. Some argue that since, as a young man, he had overreacted to the response to his First Symphony, his reaction over the concerto was not a surprise. Nonetheless, after the initial performances, Rachmaninoff made cuts and other revisions, reducing the first movement from 367 to 346 bars and the finale from 567 to 476 bars; he also removed a few bars from the central Largo. Altogether, he shortened the piece from 1016 to 902 bars. This was the state in which the concerto was published in 1928 by the composer's publishing firm TAIR in Paris. The work had several performances in Britain in 1929 and in mainland Europe the following year. These were no more successful than the initial performances. Rachmaninoff, more discouraged, withdrew the work until he had time to rework the piece more thoroughly.Pianists Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
and Yevgeny Sudbin
Yevgeny Sudbin
Yevgeny Sudbin is a Russian concert pianist. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. After his family emigrated to Berlin when he was age 10, he won several German piano competitions, and studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. He was a pupil of Christopher Elton at...
and biographer Max Harrison have argued that, as with his Second Piano Sonata
Piano Sonata No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36, is a piano sonata in B-flat minor composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1913. Rachmaninoff revised it in 1931, with the note, "The new version, revised and reduced by author." It has three movements:#Allegro agitato#Non allegro...
, Rachmaninoff got everything about the Fourth Concerto right the first time. They find it extremely disappointing that he yielded to adverse opinion, repeatedly making changes weakening what had initially been a powerfully original work. While these revisions might imply an undue willingness to compromise, the motivation for making those changes may have been incomprehension. Rachmaninoff himself may simply have not fathomed the true nature of this composition, especially when it was first performed. Musicologist Geoffrey Norris, in contrast, argued that Rachmaninoff did not go far enough in his revisions. He claimed that had Rachmaninoff tackled the basic structural deficiencies of the work, it might have been received more sympathetically than it actually was.
Revision
Though Rachmaninoff talked about revisiting the Fourth Concerto after finishing the Third SymphonySymphony No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44 between 1935 and 1936. The Third Symphony is considered a transitional work in Rachmaninoff's output. In melodic outline and rhythm it is his most expressively Russian symphony, particularly in the dance rhythms of the finale...
, he put off going over the score until 1941, 15 years after initially completing it. It thus became the last original composition on which he worked. While not changing the basic thematic material, Rachmaninoff revised the orchestration, simplified the piano writing in the central largo, and thoroughly overhauled the finale. He also made cuts additional to the ones he had made in 1928. He reduced the first movement from 346 to 313 bars, the slow movement from 80 to 77 bars and, most invasively, the finale from 476 to 434 bars. This brought the complete work from 902 to 824 bars. He also recast much of the music to dispense with unnecessary themes and create a more compact structure.
That fall, Rachmaninoff premiered the revised Fourth, again in Philadelphia but with Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
conducting. Edwin Schloss wrote in his review for The Philadelphia Record
The Philadelphia Record
The Philadelphia Record was a daily newspaper published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1877 until 1947. The Record was founded in 1877 as a one-cent daily newspaper...
,
The Fourth Concerto as heard yesterday is a revision of a work first heard here 14 years ago from Rachmaninoff's hands. The revision, which is extensive, was made last summer and yesterday's performance was the concerto's first anywhere in its present form. It turned out to be nobly-meant and darkly romantic music, somewhat fragmentary in shape and typically Rachmaninoffian in spirit. And, with all due respect to the great artist who wrote it, and for all its fine pianism, a trifle dull. Its playing, however, added up to news in any season—news that becomes increasingly miraculous as the years go by, namely, that for all his 68 years, Rachmaninoff is still one of the most virile and brilliant young pianists before the public today.
Ormandy and Rachmaninoff played the revised Fourth, with the Second Symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, created in 1906–07. The premiere was conducted by the composer himself in St. Petersburg on 8 February 1908. Its duration is approximately 60 minutes when performed uncut; cut performances can be as...
, in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, and eventually New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, as well as recording the work for RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
. Still, Rachmaninoff was never fully satisfied with the work, continuing to tinker with the orchestration even in the days immediately before his recording session with Ormandy, and lamenting that he did not find the time to reorchestrate the piece to his satisfaction. Many of these changes never found their way into the printed score; however, they have made it onto recordings by other pianists who have studied the composer's own recording, including Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
, Stephen Hough
Stephen Hough
Stephen Andrew Gill Hough is a British-born classical pianist, composer and writer. He became an Australian citizen in 2005 and thus has dual nationality .-Biography:...
, Leonard Pennario
Leonard Pennario
Leonard Pennario was an American classical pianist and composer.He was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Los Angeles, attending Los Angeles High School remaining in L.A. for his entire career. He first came to notice when he performed Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto at age 12, with the...
and Earl Wild
Earl Wild
Royland Earl Wild was an American pianist widely recognized as a leading virtuoso of his generation. Harold C. Schonberg called him a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class". He was known as well for his transcriptions of classical music and jazz...
.
Whatever might be thought about the 1941 revision, there is an elimination of rhetoric and ornamentation. Moreover, there is a sharper demand on involvement from the soloist than in some parts of the Third Concerto. The exposition of the finale is an especially fine instance of the architectural quality of rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
in the performance of this work. Altogether, the immense virtuosity of the finale on the whole is not showy passagework to please audiences. It is hectic, full of action, unstoppable in its energy and power.
Manuscript version
In 2000 the Rachmaninoff Estate authorized Boosey & HawkesBoosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and wind musical instruments....
, with the expert assistance of Robert Threlfall and Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (musician)
Leslie Howard AM is an Australian pianist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings...
, to publish the uncut 1926 manuscript version of the Fourth Concerto. Ondine Records recorded the work with pianist Alexander Ghindin and the Helsinki Philharmonic under Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
. The publication of the uncut manuscript drew considerable interest because Rachmaninoff's alterations of the Second Symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, created in 1906–07. The premiere was conducted by the composer himself in St. Petersburg on 8 February 1908. Its duration is approximately 60 minutes when performed uncut; cut performances can be as...
and Second Piano Sonata
Piano Sonata No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36, is a piano sonata in B-flat minor composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1913. Rachmaninoff revised it in 1931, with the note, "The new version, revised and reduced by author." It has three movements:#Allegro agitato#Non allegro...
in the 1930s were actually detrimental to those pieces. Rachmaninoff's changes in those works included large cuts, a number of minor textural rewritings, and a few newly composed segments to attempt cementing a fragmented structure. Access to the manuscript of the Fourth Piano Concerto could therefore show what the composer may have initially had in mind, structurally speaking, and what he might have obfuscated in the process of revision.
In an interview with Elger Niels, Ashkenazy called the manuscript version much closer to the Third Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, composed in 1909 by Sergei Rachmaninoff is famous for its technical and musical demands on the performer...
than to its subsequent revisions. After studying all three versions, conducting two and playing one, Ashkenazy concluded that, in principle, he preferred the manuscript edition. His main reason for this was that the Finale worked much better in the manuscript version, since the second subject is repeated. Even so, he does not consider the movement an unqualified success:
The manuscript version reveals a more violent set of musical contrasts. Especially in the Finale, these juxtapositions result in some strident episodes absent from either of the revisions. Because of Rachmaninoff's removal of these contrasts, writer Elger Niels called the manuscript version a missed culmination in Rachmaninoff's development. Instead, Rachmaninoff started writing in clearer musical forms, like those in the Third Symphony
Symphony No. 3 (Rachmaninoff)
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44 between 1935 and 1936. The Third Symphony is considered a transitional work in Rachmaninoff's output. In melodic outline and rhythm it is his most expressively Russian symphony, particularly in the dance rhythms of the finale...
and Symphonic Dances
Symphonic Dances (Rachmaninoff)
The Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, is an orchestral suite in three movements. Completed in 1940, it is Sergei Rachmaninoff's last composition. The work summarizes Rachmaninoff's compositional output....
.
Also, in the Finale, the appearance of the Dies Irae
Dies Irae
Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...
is not a cause of fright or dread. Instead it prominently heads the second subject, which in both musical gesture and Dies-Irae-related content greatly resembles the triumphant second subject from the Finale of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony. While this similarity may not have been intended, a reference to the coda from The Bells
The Bells (Rachmaninoff)
The Bells , Op. 35, is a choral symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff, written in 1913. The words are from the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, very freely translated into Russian by the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. The traditional Gregorian melody Dies Irae is used frequently throughout the work...
at the end of the Finale's exposition section may be more deliberate. None of these instances were left in the composer's 1941 edition.
Manuscript version
- Alexandre Ghindin, pianist, with the Helsinki Philharmonic OrchestraHelsinki Philharmonic OrchestraThe Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra is an orchestra based in Helsinki, Finland...
conducted by Vladimir AshkenazyVladimir AshkenazyVladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
, recorded in 2001 (first recording) - Yevgeny SudbinYevgeny SudbinYevgeny Sudbin is a Russian concert pianist. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. After his family emigrated to Berlin when he was age 10, he won several German piano competitions, and studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. He was a pupil of Christopher Elton at...
, pianist, with the North Carolina Symphony conducted by Grant Llewellyn, recorded in January 2008
1928 version
- William BlackWilliam Black (pianist)William David Black was an American pianist and teacher.-Biography:He was born in Dallas, Texas. He had a sister, Beverley, and a brother, the pianist, conductor and composer Robert Black...
, pianist, with the Icelandic Symphony OrchestraIcelandic Symphony OrchestraSinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands is an orchestra based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The ISO is an autonomous public institution under the auspices of the Icelandic Ministry of Education...
conducted by Igor BuketoffIgor BuketoffIgor Buketoff was an American conductor, arranger and teacher. He had a special affinity with Russian music and with Sergei Rachmaninoff in particular. He also strongly promoted British contemporary music, and new music in general.- Biography :Buketoff was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son...
, recorded in 1992 (the first and only recording)
While the Black/Buketoff recording is the only commercial recording of the complete 1928 version, a single movement, the third, has been recorded by pianist Mikhail Rudy
Mikhail Rudy
Mikhail Rudy is a Russian-born French pianist. He was born on April 3, 1953 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where his family had been deported by the Soviet regime. His grandparents were imprisoned in concentration camps...
and Mariss Jansons
Mariss Jansons
Mariss Ivars Georgs Jansons is a Latvian conductor, the son of conductor Arvīds Jansons. His mother, the singer Iraida Jansons, who was Jewish, gave birth to him in hiding in Riga, Latvia, after her father and brother were killed in the Riga Ghetto...
conducting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Furthermore, there exist two non-commercial recordings of the 1928 version at the International Piano Archives of the University of Maryland: a live performance from May 3rd, 1973 by pianist Gunnar Johansen with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Jorge Mester in Indianapolis as part of the Butler University Romantic Music Festival (Johansen had performed the concerto with success in 1934 with Dr. Stock and the Chicago Symphony), as well as a November 12th, 1939 recording of a Radio City Music Hall broadcast of the concerto performed by pianist Henrietta Schumann and the Radio City Orchestra conducted by Erno Rapee, apparently the first recording of this work, which even predates Rachmaninoff's own 1941 recording of the final version. The Henrietta Schumann recording comprises five sides of three 78 rpm instantaneous discs which have been transferred to cd format by the International Piano Archives at Maryland which has taken the opportunity to reduce the surface noise and correct the playback pitch, although some portions of the work are missing due to recording with only one disc-cutting lathe.
1941 version
- Sergei RachmaninoffSergei RachmaninoffSergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, pianist, with the Philadelphia OrchestraPhiladelphia OrchestraThe Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
conducted by Eugene OrmandyEugene OrmandyEugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
, recorded in 1941. - Arturo Benedetti MichelangeliArturo Benedetti MichelangeliArturo Benedetti Michelangeli was a virtuoso Italian classical pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, as well as one of the most important Italian pianists along with Ferruccio Busoni and Maurizio Pollini.-Biography:Born in Brescia, Italy, he began...
, pianist, with the Philharmonia OrchestraPhilharmoniaThe Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...
conducted by Ettore GracisEttore GracisEttore Gracis was an Italian conductor. Born in La Spezia, he studied at the Venice Conservatory and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana. He became involved with the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music and the Naples Festival, conducting modern revivals of classical Italian and German operas...
, recorded in 1957. - Earl WildEarl WildRoyland Earl Wild was an American pianist widely recognized as a leading virtuoso of his generation. Harold C. Schonberg called him a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class". He was known as well for his transcriptions of classical music and jazz...
, pianist, with the Royal Philharmonic OrchestraRoyal Philharmonic OrchestraThe Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...
conducted by Jascha HorensteinJascha HorensteinJascha Horenstein was an American conductor.Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire , into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother came from an Austrian rabbinical family and his father was Russian....
, recorded in 1965. - Vladimir AshkenazyVladimir AshkenazyVladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
, pianist, with the London Symphony OrchestraLondon Symphony OrchestraThe London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
conducted by André PrevinAndré PrevinAndré George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...
, recorded in 1972. - Mikhail RudyMikhail RudyMikhail Rudy is a Russian-born French pianist. He was born on April 3, 1953 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where his family had been deported by the Soviet regime. His grandparents were imprisoned in concentration camps...
, pianist, with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic OrchestraSt. Petersburg Philharmonic OrchestraThe Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra was formed in 1882 and is Russia's oldest symphony orchestra.It was initially known as the "Imperial Music Choir" and performed privately for the court of Alexander III of Russia. By the 1900s it had started to give public performances at the...
conducted by Mariss JansonsMariss JansonsMariss Ivars Georgs Jansons is a Latvian conductor, the son of conductor Arvīds Jansons. His mother, the singer Iraida Jansons, who was Jewish, gave birth to him in hiding in Riga, Latvia, after her father and brother were killed in the Riga Ghetto...
, recorded in 1993. - Jean-Yves ThibaudetJean-Yves Thibaudet-Early life:Jean-Yves Thibaudet was born in Lyon, France, to non-professional musical parents. His father played the violin, and his mother, of German origin and a somewhat accomplished pianist herself, introduced the instrument to Jean-Yves....
, with the Cleveland OrchestraCleveland OrchestraThe Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
conducted by Vladimir AshkenazyVladimir AshkenazyVladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...
, recorded in 1996. - Boris BerezovskyBoris Berezovsky (pianist)- Biography :Berezovsky studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. Following his London début at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as "an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power."In May 2005...
, with Dmitri Liss conducting the Ural Philharmonic OrchestraUral Philharmonic OrchestraUral Philharmonic Orchestra is a full orchestra based in Yekaterinburg and considered to be one of the leading orchestras in Russia...
, recorded in 2006. - Leif Ove AndsnesLeif Ove AndsnesLeif Ove Andsnes is a Norwegian pianist and an ardent champion of the works of Edvard Grieg.-Biography:He studied with Jiří Hlinka at the Bergen Music Conservatory and made his debut in Oslo in 1987, in Britain at the Edinburgh Festival with the Oslo Philharmonic in 1989, and in the United States...
, with the London Symphony OrchestraLondon Symphony OrchestraThe London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
, conducted by Antonio PappanoAntonio PappanoAntonio Pappano is a British conductor and pianist of Italian parentage.Pappano's family relocated to England from Castelfranco in Miscano near Benevento, Italy in 1958 and at the time of his birth his parents worked in the restaurant business, but Pasquale Pappano, his father, was by vocation a...
, recorded 2010
External links
- Rachmaninoff's Works for Piano and Orchestra An analysis of Rachmaninoff's Works for Piano and Orchestra including the Piano Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody
- An interview with Vladimir Ashkenazy about the manuscript version of the Fourth Concerto