Leonard Bernstein once likened the changing valuations of various artists, composers, and authors to the ups and downs of stocks: “Coleridge is down five and a half points…” This was in the context of trying to assess the value of George Gershwin’s music. Of course, the value of a stock is obvious; it’s the price that someone is willing to pay for it. For music, there is no simple evaluation. Numbers of performances or dollar amounts of CDs (or downloads) sold, for example, can’t possibly tell the whole story or even the most important part.
When it comes to critical evaluations, Rachmaninov never fares nearly as well as the passionate popularity of his music would augur. Michael Steinberg, obviously a great admirer of Rachmaninov, in his fine book, “The Symphony,” puts it thusly, “…let us not do Rachmaninov the disservice of overstating his case. He was not a giant like Verdi or Stravinsky…”
Stravinsky was truly one of the greats. Yet, he often relied on given melodies from collections or other composer’s works. With Rachmaninov, the word “inspiration” is seldom far from our lips considering the sensuous, even sultry or haunting melodies in his most popular pieces. And the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 may rank as THE most popular of his works (if one ignores the 4-minute, “Prelude in C-sharp minor”).
The difference in approach to music by the two composers defines a cleavage point for aesthetics in general. As James R. Gaines puts it in his fascinating pairing of Bach and Fredrick the Great, “Evening in the Palace of Reason”:
In Bach’s time and as far back as Plato’s, the question was framed in terms of ratio and sensus, or intellect vs. emotion/intuition, as alternate faculties by which one could most properly appreciate a piece of music. The proponents of ratio cited Pythagoras’ galactic harmony and numeric proportions, the intellectual, quasi-scientific aspect of music that linked it to astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic…The sensus position did not come into its own until…the assertion of individual and personal feelings, a very gradual process that heated up considerably during the eighteenth century and culminated in the Romantic hero of the nineteenth.
One could hardly find more polarized proponents of these positions than Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninov. Does that mean that only cold brainiacs can appreciate Stravinsky and only swooning airheads love Rachmaninov? Certainly not! It’s just that Rachmaninov exemplifies the values of the 19th century and Stravinsky, the 20th.
Stravinsky on Rachmaninov: "Some people achieve a kind of immortality just by the totality with which they do or do not possess some quality or characteristic. Rachmaninov immortalizing totality was his scowl. He was a six-and–a-half-foot-tall scowl." Actually, Rachmaninov was far more prone to depression rather than anger—moody, gloomy, and morbid at times. The Piano Concerto No. 2 is dedicated to Dr. Nicholai Dahl, a psychiatrist. And there is certainly a story behind that.
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) was born into a musical family at Oneg in the Novgorod region, an area in northwestern Russia closer to St. Petersburg and Estonia than to Moscow. His grandfather was a pupil of John Field, an Irish piano virtuoso credited with composing the first piano nocturnes, who had toured in Russia and counted Glinka among his students. Rachmaninov’s mother gave him his first piano lessons. Rachmaninov initially studied in St. Petersburg but the calamitous spending of his alcoholic father (also a pianist) caused the loss of the family estate and the break-up of his parent’s marriage.
Rachmaninov’s studies suffered, reportedly due to his mother’s lack of attention, and he was enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory because of its reputation for discipline. Rachmaninov excelled there in both piano and composition. Among his teachers were the famous composers, Taneyev and Arensky. Tchaikovsky, also a professor there, was very encouraging. Rachmaninov tells the story that Tchaikovsky was on a jury of professors to grade him. After Rachmaninov had played some of his compositions, Tchaikovsky not only gave him a “5 plus”—the highest possible score—but put extra, non-regulation plus signs all around it. Rachmaninov graduated a year early in both piano (1891) and composition (1892) being one of only three students to that point, including Taneyev, to ever win the Gold Medal. Undoubtedly, Rachmaninov was a highly trained composer skilled in all facets of the art.
Yet, catastrophe loomed. Rachmaninov’s First Symphony was premiered in 1897. It was conducted by a drunken Glazunov and bombed to the extent that, completely demoralized, Rachmaninov essentially abandoned composition for three years to concertize as a piano virtuoso. (He and Liszt are often mentioned in the same breath as the kings of piano technique.) Rachmaninov was also became a very fine conductor therefore never having to rely on others to premiere his works.
At this point, Dr. Dahl enters the story. Rachmaninov began frequent sessions with him in 1900. Using a combination of hypnosis (“you will begin work on your concerto…you will write with great ease…its quality will be excellent…”) and talk therapy, Dr. Dahl revived Rachmaninov’s composing career. The Piano Concerto No 2 was one of the initial results. The complete Concerto No. 2 was premiered in Moscow on November 1901 with Rachmaninov as soloist. This was a triumph washing away the bitter memories of the Symphony No 1.
The Concerto opens (“Moderato”) with some of the most famous piano chords is music with lowest F sounding repeatedly. (In an amusing shtick, pianist Barry Douglas played them with his nose in a video with comedian Dudley Moore.) The orchestra then breaks in with the forceful, c-minor theme as the piano imaginatively accompanies below. The second theme is for the piano solo. It has a magnificent, fascinating, mysterious effect with its rising and then fluttering descent! The development wonderfully takes elements of what we have heard rather than degrading the perfection of the theme with conventional manipulations. The recap, again, has the orchestra in command with more forceful piano contributions below. But now the horn gets to play the second melody before the piano magically finishes.
The second movement (Adagio sustenuto—Slow, sustained) begins this time with the orchestra, but the piano on its entrance, again acts as accompanist for the main melody played by the flute and the clarinet—contributing its own phrases at times to the line. The woodwinds (and cellos) return the favor later in this most dreamy of movements. And the violins have perhaps the most beautiful, complete statement of this theme at the end. The third movement (Allegro schezando--Fast, playful) begins with the orchestra marching in quickly and breaking into cymbal crashes to set up the piano’s entrance back in the minor mode. Then THE theme sounds in the strings. (Or as it is sung by Sinatra, et al.: “Full moon and empty arms.”) Of course, this is going to return in glory with the piano triumphant before the characteristic Rachmaninov rhythmic, crashing close.
Program Note by IPO Board
Member Charles Amenta, M.D.