Symphony No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)

Despite its poor initial reception, the symphony is now seen as a dynamic representation of the Russian symphonic tradition, with British composer Robert Simpson calling it "a powerful work in its own right, stemming from Borodin and Tchaikovsky, but convinced, individual, finely constructed, and achieving a genuinely tragic and heroic expression that stands far above the pathos of his later music.

"[1] The premiere, which took place in St. Petersburg on March 28, 1897, was an absolute disaster for reasons which included under-rehearsal and the poor performance by the possibly intoxicated conductor Alexander Glazunov.

[9] He composed the symphony between January and October 1895, which was an unusually long time for Rachmaninoff to spend on a composition; the project had proved to be extremely challenging.

Those daily work schedules had increased to ten hours a day by September, and the symphony was completed and orchestrated before Rachmaninoff left Ivanovka on October 7.

In it two motivic items are presented which will establish the cyclic material for the entire composition: a note cell preceded by a grupetto and theme derived from the medieval Dies Irae plainchant.

The movement's main theme is a short melody, that we hear alternatively under its original form and its inversion, but the latter only appears briefly and episodically, spaced out by call signals and shudders of the orchestra which constitute an expressive background.

Brass instruments take a prominent role followed by a new change in the central part (Allegro mosso), introduced by repeated notes in the low strings.

A tam-tam hit follows the coda, at the end of which the grupetto, played by the strings in a slower time, is repeated with a prophetic insistence, strengthened by the brass and percussion instruments.

[16] The composer Robert Simpson regarded Rachmaninoff's First Symphony as much superior to the two that followed it, feeling that it had been created "naturally and without strain" on the whole[17] and with all four of its movements "thematically genuinely integrated.

"[23] Harrison adds that Rachmaninoff's treatment of symphonic form might for this reason be more closely descended from Alexander Borodin, a point the St. Petersburg critics may have either failed to notice or ignored at the work's premiere.

By the reports of many present, the rehearsal that Rimsky-Korsakov had heard, conducted by his friend and musical protégé Glazunov, was both a disaster as a performance and a horrific travesty of the score.

[29] The elder composer's comments on Glazunov's initial appearances as a conductor may in fact have been accurate for this occasion as well: "Slow by nature, maladroit and clumsy of movement, the maestro, speaking slowly and in a low voice, manifestly displayed little ability either for conducting rehearsals or for swaying the orchestra during concert performances.

Conductor Alexander Khessin, who attended the premiere, remembered, "The Symphony was insufficiently rehearsed, the orchestra was ragged, basic stability in tempos was lacking, many errors in the orchestral parts were uncorrected; but the chief thing that ruined the work was the lifeless, superficial, bland performance, with no flashes of animation, enthusiasm or brilliance of orchestral sound.

As reportedly told later by his pupil Dmitri Shostakovich and echoed in the New Grove, Glazunov kept a bottle of alcohol hidden behind his desk at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, sipping it through a tube during lessons.

[35] Drunk or not, Glazunov may have neither understood nor been totally committed to the symphony, as it was a composition in a newer, more modern idiom and greater length (approximately 45 minutes) than he might have expected.

[37] (Glazunov later demonstrated his low regard for Rachmaninoff's music by leaving a copy of the score for the Fourth Piano Concerto in a Paris taxicab in 1930.

[32] While it was generally received favorably, César Cui stated, in a foretaste of his comments on the symphony, that "the whole composition shows that this composer is more concerned about sound than about music.

The St. Petersburg musical scene was dominated by a group of young composers called the Belyayev circle, headed by Rimsky-Korsakov since he had taught many of them at the Conservatory there.

[32] Rachmaninoff's work may have been considered offensive because of its relatively progressive use of symphonic form; this could have gone against the critics' sensibilities as well as the precepts Rimsky-Korsakov taught at the Conservatory.

[32] Aleksandr Gauk, who would conduct the triumphant revival of the symphony in 1945, surmised as much, suggesting the work failed initially "because it was a modern composition, far ahead of its time, so it did not satisfy the tastes of the contemporary critics.

"[48] A more balanced consideration of the work, unfortunately too late to undo the damage wrought by Cui, came from critic Nikolai Findeisen in the April issue of Russkaya Muzykalnaya Gazeta: The climax of the concert, Rachmaninoff's D minor symphony, was not very successfully interpreted, and was therefore largely misunderstood and underestimated by the audience.

However, I shall refrain from expressing my final opinion, for it would be too easy to repeat the history of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, only recently [thanks to Nikisch] "discovered" by us, and which everyone now admires as a new, marvelous, and beautiful creation.

The first movement, and especially the furious finale with its concluding Largo, contains much beauty, novelty, and even inspiration...[48]Rachmaninoff wrote to composer Alexander Zatayevich on May 6 "of my impressions of the performance of the symphony ... though it is difficult for me.

According to many sources, the original manuscript, now lost, carried a dedication to "A. L." plus the epigraph to Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay.

He had begun sketches for another symphony but now abandoned them[54] and was unable to compose until 1900, when family members and friends convinced him to seek hypnotic therapy with Dr. Nikolai Dahl.

One stroke of good fortune came from impresario Savva Mamontov, who two years earlier had founded the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company.

)[57] He wrote in 1910 to critic Grigory Prokofiev, "The symphony contains many successful passages insofar as its music is concerned, but the orchestration is worse than weak, a fact that caused its failure at the St. Petersburg performance.

[4] Before his departure from Russia, Rachmaninoff gave the key to his writing desk in his Moscow flat to his cousin Sofiya Satina; in it was locked the manuscript score for the First Symphony.

[60] While Rachmaninoff had kept the score of the First Symphony safely in his Moscow flat until the October Revolution, he had made no attempt to collect the orchestral parts in his haste to leave St. Petersburg in 1897.

Using these parts and the two-piano arrangement, a group of scholars headed by prominent Russian conductor Aleksandr Gauk reconstructed the full score.