Three years after his third piano concerto was finished, Rachmaninoff moved with his family to a house in Rome that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had used.
[1] However, because both of his daughters contracted typhoid fever, he was unable to finish the composition in Rome.
Instead, Rachmaninoff moved his family on to Berlin in order to consult with doctors.
[1] When the girls were well enough, Rachmaninoff traveled with his family back to his Ivanovka country estate, where he finished the second piano sonata.
[1] In the development section, which is split into three parts, there is much tonal instability with constantly changing key centers.
[1] Parts of this section use the left hand to imitate bells, with chromatic descending, alternating sevenths and thirds.
The second movement's main theme is based on a motive of a sequentially repeated falling third.
[2] In 1940, with the composer's consent, Vladimir Horowitz created his own edition which combined elements of both the original and revised versions.