Download Rachmaninoff - Grace Edwards

Sergey Vasil’yevich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op.18. (1900–1901)
“What I try to do, when writing my music, is to say simply and directly that which is
in my heart when I am composing. If there is love there, or bitterness, or sadness, or
religion, these moods become a part of my music.” —Rachmaninoff
Sergey Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor remains one of the
late composer’s most well loved works and arguably his most emotional. Still
in a state of despondency following the disastrous premiere of his first major
work, Piano Concerto No. 1, several years earlier, Rachmaninoff seemed
unable to recover his creative energies. The composer’s dear friends the Satin
family eventually recommended that he seek treatment with Dr. Nikolai Dahl,
who specialized in hypnosis techniques. Though the precise nature of
Rachmaninoff’s treatment is not known, we can be thankful that it proved
successful, for shortly afterwards the composer’s muse returned to him and
he was able to begin his famous second piano concerto, dedicated to the
doctor.
Piano Concerto No. 2 was originally premiered without its first movement, in
Moscow in 1900. The work was eventually presented in its entirety the
following year, and both concerts solidly established Rachmaninoff’s fame as
a composer.
Showcasing the composer’s unique brand of Romanticism, this concerto
possesses several characteristics that were unusual in his day. Among these is
the opening—it was uncommon for the piano to open on a series of chords
and bass notes loudening to fortissimo, only to retreat into the background and
hand the orchestra the main theme. Reflective and yet refreshingly open, the
concerto’s lyrical, drawn-out melodic lines lend a sense of poetic unity to the
whole, which demands a great deal of maturity from its performers.
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. (1877–1878)
Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony was dearly cherished by its composer, who
unabashedly maintained throughout his life that it was his best symphonic
work. Written in the beautiful surrounds of Florence, Italy, and premiered in
Moscow on 22 February 1878 (New Style Calendar), the symphony represents
one of the most significant works to flow from Tchaikovsky’s pen during an
emotionally harrowing period of his life.
On the 18 July 1877, the same year in which the symphony was written,
Tchaikovsky married the unfortunate Antonina Milyukova. The marriage was
a disaster and within two months Tchaikovsky abandoned his wife to go
abroad, never to see her again. Not long after, his bizarre and somewhat
business-like relationship with the extremely wealthy widow Nadezhda von
Meck began to flourish, though the two agreed never to meet in person. Over
the course of fourteen years, the composer would write a veritable novel to
von Meck, discussing his daily life, work and personal challenges. On her part,
von Meck would send Tchaikovsky regular allowances that enabled him to
continue his work unburdened by financial concerns. Regularly referring to
his Fourth as “our symphony” in his correspondence with the widow,
Tchaikovsky dedicated the symphony to von Meck, though in an
appropriately secret fashion the dedication reads simply: “To my best
friend.”
In one of his letters to von Meck, Tchaikovsky attempted for the first time to
express in words the outline of a programme for the symphony. Though this
“programme” was never meant to be read by anyone other than the
composer’s patron, the document has been largely detrimental to the
symphony’s acceptance as a formal composition. Nonetheless, it offers some
insight into the symphony’s structure.
Tchaikovsky’s use of the opening “fate” motif in the first movement,
introduced by the horns and brass, clarifies the movement’s structure through
its recurrence. In the second movement, the melancholy voice of the oboe
introduces the canzona, or song. The Scherzo shows the composer at his most
playful, and the joyful pizzicato plucking of the strings makes this movement
one of the most memorable. Last but not least, the finale employs the Russian
folk-song "In the Field a Birch Tree Stood" and races energetically towards its
sublime conclusion.
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov)
Night on the Bare Mountain (1908)
Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain,
begun after the latter’s death, has become a staple of the orchestral repertoire
and remains the most well-known version of the work. By creating his own
adaptation, Rimsky’s intention had been to turn Mussorgsky’s “unpolished”
version into a “workable concert piece,” using that which was “the best and
most appropriate” from the late composer’s musical materials. Though
Rimsky’s arrangement differs markedly from Mussorgsky’s original,
featuring altered keys and new passages, in spirit it remains closely allied to
Mussorgsky’s intentions.
Mussorgsky’s original Night on Bare Mountain, was both his first and last
purely orchestral piece, and was inspired by the witches' Sabbath in Nikolay
Gogol's story St John's Eve. Aside from Rimsky’s arrangement, premiered on
15 October 1886 at Kononov Hall in St. Petersburg, the work exists in two
other versions. The first was written in the early 1860s, originally scored for
piano and orchestra but soon after re-scored as an orchestral piece for a
project that came to nothing. The second was a chorus and piano version
written between 1872 and 1880, which was intended to be scored for orchestra
at a later date. It was created for inclusion in an opera-ballet, Mlada, a scheme
which was also destined for failure, and in an even more altered form for the
opera Sorochintsy Fair, which was still unfinished at the time of his death.
Night on Bare Mountain, therefore, was never performed during Mussorgsky’s
lifetime.
The programme outline in Rimsky’s 1886 edition remains concerned with a
witches’ Sabbath taking place on St. John’s Night on the Lysa Hora (in English
“Bald Mountain”) just as in Mussorgsky’s original vision. As if arriving full
circle, Rimsky’s edition leaves to Mussorgsky the final word on the piece’s
interpretation, quoting from his autograph manuscript: “Subterranean sounds
of unearthly voices. Appearance of the Spirits of Darkness. ... At the height of
the orgy, the bell of the little village church is heard from afar. The Spirits of
Darkness are dispersed. Daybreak.”
Grace Edwards