World Premiere: November 9, 1901
Most Recent HSO Performance: February 15, 2015
Instrumentation: Solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass
Duration: 32'
Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 (1890-1891)
Rachmaninoff entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1888 to study piano with Alexander Siloti and composition with Taneyev and Arensky. He was a brilliant student. At the age of nineteen, he wrote the deathless Prelude in C-sharp minor, which carried his name to music lovers around the world (and became so frequently requested that he grew to loath the piece). He graduated from the piano curriculum in 1891 with a gold medal for excellence, and finished his studies as a composer the following year, upon which occasion the faculty unanimously voted to place his name on the Conservatory’s Roll of Honor. Rachmaninoff himself related one of his proudest moments as a student: “Amongst the examining Professors sat Tchaikovsky. The highest mark given was a five, which could, in exceptional cases, be supplemented by a plus sign. I already knew I had been given this mark. When I finished playing my Song Without Words, Tchaikovsky rose and busied himself with the examination journal. It was only after a fortnight that I heard what he had been doing with it: he had added three more plus signs to my mark, one on top, one below, and one behind. This five with four plus marks—a unique occurrence in the annals of the Conservatory—was naturally much discussed, and the story made the rounds
of all Moscow.”
In the summer of 1890, while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff began a grand Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor. (He had abandoned a similar attempt two years earlier.) The first movement was finished quickly, but he did not return to the piece until the following year. On July 20, 1891, he wrote to Mikhail Slonov, “On July 6th, I fully completed composing and scoring my Piano Concerto. I could have finished it much sooner, but after the first movement, I idled for a long while and began to write the following movements only on July 3rd. Composed and scored the last two movements in two and a half days. You can imagine what a job that was! I wrote from five in the morning till eight in the evening, so after finishing the work I was terribly tired. Afterwards I rested for a few days. While working I never feel fatigue (on the contrary—pleasure). With me fatigue appears only when I realize that a big labor is finished. I am pleased with the Concerto.” Rachmaninoff gave the Concerto’s premiere on a student concert at the Moscow Conservatory on March 17, 1892; the school’s director, Vasily Safonoff, conducted. “At the rehearsals the 18-year-old Rachmaninoff showed the same stubbornly calm character that we knew from our comradely gatherings,” wrote his fellow student Mikhail Bukinik. “Safonoff, who ordinarily conducted the compositions of his students, would brutally and unceremoniously change anything he wished in these scores, cleaning them up and cutting parts to make them more playable.... But Safonoff had a hard time with Rachmaninoff. This student not only refused categorically to accept alterations, but also had the audacity to stop Safonoff (as conductor), pointing out his errors in tempo and nuance. This was obviously displeasing to Safonoff, but being intelligent, he understood the rights of the author, though a beginner, to make his own interpretation, and he tried to take the edge off any awkwardness. Besides, Rachmaninoff’s talent as a composer was so obvious, and his quiet self-assurance made such an impression on all, that even the omnipotent Safonoff had to yield.”
The new Concerto enjoyed little success at its premiere, though one reviewer allowed that it showed “taste, tension, youthful sincerity and obvious knowledge; already there is much promise.” Rachmaninoff himself thought the work in its original version to be flawed. After creating a sensation at his London debut in 1898 as pianist, conductor and composer, he was urged to return the following season to play his Concerto, but promised that he would write a better one for his next engagement there. Though he played the work frequently, his dissatisfaction with it remained, and, after talking about doing so for years, he finally undertook its revision in October 1917—just as the Russian Revolution erupted in the streets around his Moscow flat. “I sat at the writing table all day without troubling about the rattle of machine guns and rifle shots,” he noted in his diary. In December, he fled to Finland with other members of the aristocracy, supported himself for a year in Scandinavia by giving concerts, and settled in the United States in 1918. The revision of the First Concerto (which was undertaken after the composition of the Second and Third Piano Concertos) was extensive, especially in its alterations to the work’s form and orchestration. The Concerto’s thematic material, however, with its sense of bursting, youthful impetuosity, was largely retained. “Rachmaninoff transformed an early immature essay into a concise, spirited work,” wrote Geoffrey Norris.
Though the opening movement follows the traditional concerto form, its greatest appeal arises from the melancholy nature of its themes, a quality at which Rachmaninoff excelled from his earliest works, and the virtuosic pianism required of the soloist, most notably in the mountainous solo cadenza that occurs near the end. The brief Andante is rhapsodic in spirit and lyrical in style, with the piano strewing sweeping arabesques upon the subdued orchestral accompaniment. The finale is aggressive and virtuosic, with a quiet center section to provide contrast before the brilliant closing pages of the work.
©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda