The Rock (Rachmaninoff)

7 (or The Crag) (Russian: Утёс) (Utyos) is a fantasia or symphonic poem for orchestra written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in the summer of 1893.

As an epigraph for the composition, Rachmaninoff chose a couplet from a poem by Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov: The golden cloud slept through the night Upon the breast of the giant-rock He later admitted, however, to a second musical programme, drawn from a story by Anton Chekhov titled "Along the Way", in which a young girl meets an older man during a stormy, overnight stop at a roadside inn on Christmas Eve.

The Rock had a positive effect on Tchaikovsky, who had been discontented with an earlier performance of a four-hand piano arrangement of his latest symphony (the sixth) by another young composer, Lev Conus.

The composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov recounted the event: At the close of the evening [Rachmaninoff] acquainted us with the newly completed symphonic poem, The Crag.

[1]Tchaikovsky asked to be allowed to include The Rock in the program of a forthcoming European concert tour.