Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
After an unsuccessful meeting with Leo Tolstoy meant to revoke his writer's block, relatives decided to introduce Rachmaninoff to the neurologist Nikolai Dahl, whom he visited daily from January to April 1900.
[1][2] In 1896, after a long hiatus, the music publisher and philanthropist Mitrofan Belyayev agreed to include it at one of his Saint Petersburg Russian Symphony Concerts.
However, there were setbacks: complaints were raised about the symphony by his teacher Sergei Taneyev upon receiving its score, which elicited revisions by Rachmaninoff, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov expressed dissatisfaction during rehearsal.
[6] The premiere, however, was a disaster; Rachmaninoff listened to the cacophonous performance backstage to avoid getting humiliated by the audience and eventually left the hall when the piece finished.
[7] The symphony was brutally panned by critics,[8] and apart from issues with the piece, the poor performance of the possibly drunk conductor, Alexander Glazunov, was also to blame.
[note 2]Rachmaninoff initially remained aloof to the failure of his symphony, but upon reflection, suffered a psychological breakdown that stopped his compositional output for three years.
[24] Alexander Goldenweiser, a peer from the same conservatory, wanted to play his new concerto at a Belyayev concert in Saint Petersburg, thinking its consummation was inevitable.
[26] A friend of the Satins (relatives of Rachmaninoff[27]), in an attempt to revoke the depressed composer's writer's block, suggested he visit Leo Tolstoy.
Himself a musician, Dahl engaged in lengthy conversations surrounding music with Rachmaninoff, and would repeat a triptych formula while the composer was half-asleep: "You will begin to write your concerto ... You will work with great facility ...
During his stay, Rachmaninoff composed the love duet of his opera Francesca da Rimini and also began working on the second and third movements of his Second Piano Concerto.
[35] With newfound enthusiasm for composition, he resumed working on them after returning to Russia,[35] which for the rest of the summer and the autumn were being finished "quickly and easily", although the first movement caused him difficulties.
[36][note 5] He told his biographer Oscar von Riesemann that "the material grew in bulk, and new musical ideas began to stir within me—far more than I needed for my concerto".
[39] On the eve of the concert, Rachmaninoff caught a cold, prompting his friends and relatives to stuff him with remedies, filling him with an excess of mulled wine;[40][41] he didn't want to admit his desire to cancel the performance.
[40] With him as soloist with an orchestra after an eight-year hiatus and his cousin Alexander Siloti making his conducting debut, it was an anxious event, but the concert was a great success,[38] easing the worries of his close ones.
[38][note 7] Before continuing composition, Rachmaninoff received financial aid from Siloti to tide him over for the next three years, securing his ability to compose without worrying about rent.
[44] By April 1901, while staying with Goldenweiser, he finished the first movement of the concerto and subsequently premiered the full work at a Moscow Philharmonic Society concert on 9 November [O.S.
[52] Its international progress started with a performance in Germany, where Siloti played it with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Arthur Nikisch's baton in January 1902.
[54] After marrying his first cousin Natalia Satina, the newly-wed Rachmaninoff received an invitation to play his concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Vasily Safonov in December.
[63] After he fulfilled his 1908 London concert engagement at the Queen's Hall under Serge Koussevitzky,[64] a flattering review by The Times emerged: "The direct expression of the work, the extraordinary precision and exactitude of Rachmaninoff's playing, and even the strict economy of movement of arms and hands which he exercises, all contributed to the impression of completeness of performance.
[66] Critics since the first performance were chiefly dismissive, echoing Philip Hale's program notes for the debut stating that "The concerto is of uneven worth.
[67][note 8] Richard Aldrich, who was a music critic for The New York Times, murmured about the overperformance of the work in proportion to its worth, but complimented Rachmaninoff's playing, stating that, with the assistance of the orchestra, "he made it sound more interesting than it ever has before here".
[76] Reginald De Koven praised a Rachmaninoff concerto performance under Walter Damrosch, writing that he rarely saw a New York audience "more moved, excited and wrought up".
[77][78] Reviewing the performance in Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, Richard D. Saunders opined that the work is of a "songful quality, imbued with haunting melodies all tinged with sombre pathos and expressed with the graceful refinement characteristic of the composer".
[81] Rachmaninoff's biographer Geoffrey Norris characterized the concerto as "notable for its conciseness and for its lyrical themes, which are just sufficiently contrasted to ensure that they are not spoilt either by overabundance or overexposure.
[87] Numerous films—such as William Dieterle's September Affair (1950), Charles Vidor's Rhapsody (1954), and Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (1955)—borrow themes from the concerto.
[88] David Lean's romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945) utilizes the music widely in its soundtrack,[89] and Frank Borzage's I've Always Loved You (1946) features it heavily;[90] this has further popularized the work.
The agitated and unstable development borrows motifs from both themes, changing keys very often and giving the melody to different instruments while a new musical idea is slowly formed.
The piece reaches a climax with the piano playing dissonant fortississimo (fff) chords, and with the horns and trumpets providing the syncopated melody.
Briefly, the piece transitions to a C major glissando in the piano, and is placid until drawn into the coda based on the first subject, marked Meno mosso, in which the movement ends in a C minor fortissimo, with the same authentic cadence as those that followed the first statement of the first theme in the exposition.
After the original fast tempo and musical drama ends, a short transition from the piano solo leads to the oboe and violas introducing a second lyrical theme in B♭ major.
