Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

THE STORY

     After spending two years conducting the Imperial Opera at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Sergei Rachmaninoff felt that the job was taking away too much time from his work as a composer. In 1906, he moved with his young family—his wife and infant daughter—to Dresden, Germany. The solitude he found proved beneficial to his compositional process and he quickly finished a first draft of his Second Symphony on New Year’s Day 1907. A decade later he moved his family to the United States, where he died in 1943.
     Although his Piano Concerto No. 2 was wildly popular, Rachmaninoff was still battling insecurities over the failure of his First Symphony. He was not convinced that he was cut out to write symphonies and, unhappy with the draft of his Second Symphony, toiled with it for another year before finally premiering it in February 1908. 
     The resulting work proves Rachmaninoff’s mastery of the symphonic form. Its craftsmanship is superb, with rich orchestration and passionate melodies, and—clocking in at nearly an hour in length—it is undeniably a grand statement. (It used to be common practice to perform an abridged version, which was sanctioned by Rachmaninoff, but today the symphony is almost always heard in its complete form. The repeat in the first movement is sometimes omitted, as it is in this evening’s performance.)
     Rachmaninoff once said that he composed music "to give expression to his feelings.” His Symphony No. 2 shows those feelings to be somber, yet warm and romantic, and as such, it is easy to hear that he was, as he explained, “completely under the spell of Tchaikovsky.”

LISTEN FOR

• The slow, dark introduction to the first movement, including a motive that will reappear throughout the symphony

• In the opening of the Allegro molto, a hint of the “Dies Irae” from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead; four yearning notes in the English horn (which reappear in Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances); and at the conclusion, a brass chorale based on the opening motive

• The lush main melody in the Adagio, which pop singer Eric Carmen later used in his 1976 song “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”

• In the coda of the finale, a fortissimo (very loud) restatement of the brass chorale from the second movement, and Rachmaninoff’s trademark four-note-rhythm ending

INSTRUMENTATION

Three flutes (one doubling piccolo), three oboes (one doubling English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings