RACHMANINOV - buywell.com · of the Paganini Rhapsody (its eighteenth variation, in particular) found the new symphony too forbidding. ... Rachmaninov tried not to …

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DATE: 25/5/06 L/S: TECH:SEL#: 4800824 CYAN MAGENTA

LABEL: Decca

ARTIST: Walter Weller

TITLE: Rachmaninov Symph 1,3

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480 0824

L’Orchestre de la Suisse RomandeLondon Philharmonic Orchestra

Walter Weller

RACHMANINOV

Symphonies Nos. 1-3

Eloq uence

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Total timing: 146’06

SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)

CD 1 76’48Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13

1 I Grave – Allegro ma non troppo 14’022 II Allegro animato 7’583 III Larghetto 11’454 IV Allegro con fuoco 12’33

Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 445 I Lento – Allegro moderato 16’386 II Adagio ma non troppo 13’16

CD 2 69’181 III Allegro 12’59

Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 272 I Largo – Allegro moderato 18’303 II Allegro molto 8’514 III Adagio 15’355 IV Allegro vivace 12’56

L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (No. 1)London Philharmonic Orchestra (Nos. 2 & 3)

Walter Weller

Recording producers: John Mordler (No. 1); Michael Woolcock (No. 2); Christopher Raeburn (No. 3)Recording engineers: James Lock (Nos. 1 & 2); James Lock, John Dunkerley (No. 3)Recording location: Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, August 1972 (No. 1); Kingsway Hall, London,UK, May 1973 (No. 2), March 1974 (No. 3)Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-HomjiArt direction: Chilu Tong · www.chilu.comBooklet editor: Bruce Raggatt

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The 1897 premiere of Rachmaninov’sSymphony No. 1 was one of the mostnotorious disasters in classical music. Thecomposer, sensing that misfortune was aboutto befall him and his newest creation, sat notin the audience but backstage (‘squirming’according to his cousin Lyudmila Skalon)in what is now the St. PetersburgPhilharmonic Hall.

The fault appears to have lain not in themusic itself – not solely, at least – but withconductor Alexander Glazunov, who did notdevote sufficient rehearsal time to thedemanding new symphony, and whoappeared to have had little sympathy orenthusiasm for it. (Some have gone so far asto suggest that he was drunk at the concert.According to Testimony, Shostakovich’smemoirs ‘as related to’ Solomon Volkov,Glazunov had a severe problem with alcohol.)During rehearsals, Glazunov conducted‘apathetically’ and ‘in a state of completeindifference’ in spite of the composer’sattempts to raise him out of his funk.

An eyewitness at the general rehearsal and atthe premiere itself wrote, ‘The performancewas raw, not thought-out, unfinished, and itproduced the impression of a slovenly play-through and not of the realisation of a

definite artistic idea, which the conductorclearly lacked. […] The torpid character of theconductor completed the whole agonisingghastliness of the impression.’ (Quotationsare taken from Barrie Martyn’s 1990biography: Rachmaninoff: composer, pianist,conductor.)

Unsurprisingly, the symphony, if it made anyimpression at all on listeners, made a verynegative one. Composer and critic César Cuiwrote ‘If there were a conservatory in Hell, ifone of its talented students were instructedto write a program symphony on the ‘SevenPlagues of Egypt’ and if he were to composea symphony like Mr. Rachmaninov’s, then hewould have fulfilled his task brilliantly andwould delight the inhabitants of Hell’.

Ouch! Rachmaninov was so taken aback bythe experience – he was ‘a changed man’, inhis own words – that he nearly destroyed alltraces of the score. It was not played againduring his lifetime, and it was published in1947, after his death, only because theoriginal orchestral parts were found inSt. Petersburg.

For two years after the disastrous premiere,the composer wrote almost nothing, andoccupied himself by conducting opera in

any other,’ he writes, ‘and that is its

remarkable bitterness. […] It is as though

Rachmaninov, having created melodies as

good and as beautiful as anything he had

written before, turned on to them the savage

light of his technique for purposes quite alien

to his nature.’

Raymond Tuttle

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Moscow, and concertising at home andabroad. It was only through hypnotherapyprovided by the oft-mentioned Dr. Dahl thatRachmaninov was able to remove his mentalblock and compose the Piano Concerto No.2, but that, as they say, is another story. Eventoday, the symphony lags behind its twosuccessors in popularity, but it is an admirablework and it in no way deserved nearly fiftyyears of oblivion after its premiere. Indeed,there are those – including composer RobertSimpson – who rate it as the best among thethree symphonies.

Rachmaninov was in his early twenties in1895 when he began work on thissymphony. Despite his youth, he already hadgraduated from the Moscow Conservatoryseveral years before. A quotation from theBible (Deuteronomy 32:25), ‘Vengeance ismine, I will repay, saith the Lord’ appeared onthe title page of the symphony’s originalmanuscript. One wonders what horrible deedRachmaninov must have committed in hisyouth to be repaid with such a disaster! Whatguilty feelings were pursuing him?

The composer, as yet unmarried, dedicatedthe symphony to Anna Lodyzhenskaya, afemme fatale of gypsy origins and the wife ofa friend. It is suggested that Rachmaninov’s

feelings for her might have been more thanplatonic. This suggestion becomes even morepowerful when one remembers that the verysame quote appears at the head of anotherwork whose central themes are passion andbetrayal. Its identity – Tolstoy’s novel AnnaKarenina. Tellingly, the Dies Irae, the ancientplainchant describing the ultimate Day ofJudgment, makes the first of its manyappearances in Rachmaninov’s music in theSymphony No. 1, more than halfway throughthe first movement, and it reappears in thenext three movements.

The dominant emotion expressed by the firstmovement is anger, or even rage – take, forinstance, the sulfurous snarl that begins thesymphony, and soon pervades it as a kind ofmotto. When more melodic passagesintervene, the impression given is one ofexhaustion, not reconciliation or romance.

As in the Symphony No. 2, the joyless scherzocomes second in this work. Marked Allegroanimato, it is tense and haunted, as ifsomething was biting at its heels. Brassfanfares suggest an accursed hunt, orgalloping around the rim of an abyss. Thesnarling motto introduced in the firstmovement soon reappears, poisoning theatmosphere. The motto opens the third

composer’s well of inspiration had dried up.

Still active as a touring concert pianist –although experiencing more and more healthproblems – the sexagenarian composer wasable to complete two movements of his newsymphony before the 1935-36 concertseason interrupted him. It wasn’t until May1936 that he was able to complete this finalsymphony. The premiere was given byLeopold Stokowski and the PhiladelphiaOrchestra – previously a lucky team for thecomposer – on 6 November 1936.

Unfortunately, the new symphony receivedonly a lukewarm reception. Listeners whowere hoping for more ‘big tunes’ in the styleof the Paganini Rhapsody (its eighteenthvariation, in particular) found the newsymphony too forbidding. Progressive criticsdisliked its regretful and (some said)reactionary manner, and, in essence, found itnot forbidding enough. Rachmaninov triednot to show his disappointment too keenly,and effected revisions (mostly cuts) in 1938.Nevertheless, the less than enthusiasticresponse to his Symphony No. 3 may wellhave stifled his creative urge in the few yearsthat remained to him; apart from theSymphonic Dances (composed in 1940), itwas his last composition of any import.

But what wonderful import! While theSymphony No. 2 still may enjoy greaterpopular appeal, the Third demonstrates howmuch Rachmaninov’s talents had matured inthe nearly thirty intervening years. Gone arethe excesses – of both length and emotion –found in the Symphony No. 2; the Third isconcise and kept firmly under rein by thecomposer. Dispensing with the usual four-movement construction, he inserts hissomewhat diabolically sparkling scherzo intothe middle of the slow second movement.

In the Symphony No. 3, the orchestration isless thick, and the harmonic and melodicdevelopments are less predictable. Still, thecomposer’s fingerprints are everywhere: thesymphony touches on human emotions fromone extreme to another, and the melodies, attheir best, are memorable without turningvulgar or cloying. Once again, the sinisterDies Irae makes an appearance – here, in thefirst and last movements.

Not everyone agrees about the merits of theSymphony No. 3. John Culshaw calls it ‘not asatisfactory symphony’ – a comment thatseems more personal than absolute.However, Culshaw’s comments about thesymphony’s mood are insightful. ‘One aspectof this symphony must be stressed more than

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movement too. Its anger might be spent – fornow – but even here, the music is unsettled,and its surface is easily ruffled.

In the last movement, the motto rushes in tointroduce a pompous martial theme – whichRachmaninov quickly dismisses in favour of afeverish procession of agitated ideas. Slowerpassages provide contrast, but they cannotdispel the pervasive feeling of uneaseconveyed by the music. Rachmaninov whipshis materials into a new frenzy, culminatingwith a blow on the tam-tam, and then bringsthe symphony to a loud and wrathful closewith further allusions to the Dies Irae and tothe motto. If manic-depression has musicalequivalents, surely Rachmaninov’s FirstSymphony is one of them!

In most photographs, Rachmaninov isn’tsmiling; when he is, he seems to be forcinghimself. His dour presence certainly is matchedby works such as the Symphony No. 1 and TheIsle of the Dead, which are gloomy in the besttradition of Russian Romanticism. There’sanother side to this composer, however: apassionate lust for life enriched by a gallows-happy Schadenfreude. All of these aspects ofthe composer’s personality – and others – comeinto play in his Symphony No. 2, the mostpopular in his symphonic trilogy.

Rachmaninov-bashing goes in and out offashion. Critics and other self-styled‘connoisseurs’ mistrust his heart-swellingmelodies and his ability to excite a widespectrum of listeners. The Second Symphonyhas come in for its share of criticism. Somefind it too long, others too gushy. One criticmemorably commented, ‘[It is] the bestimpersonation of good music I have heard’.Others, including the esteemed JohnCulshaw, complain that Rachmaninov’sorchestration is too dense in this work.Culshaw also comments that the symphony’sstructure overwhelms its musical ideas. ‘It islike building a magnificent temple for thesole purpose of storing a valuable jewel,which would be far safer, and far morebeautiful, in a pocket case,’ he writes in hisbiography of the composer. The popularity ofRachmaninov’s Second Symphony shows nosigns of diminishing, however. Perhaps that isthe most perceptive critical judgment of all.

The symphony is a product of the years thatthe composer spent in Dresden; concernsabout Russia’s political climate and the needfor a less distracting environment in which tocompose led him and his family to live inDresden between October 1906 and early1909. No one can accuse the composer of

rattling off his Symphony No. 2 in a fit offacile note-spinning. Rachmaninov took wellover a year to plan, compose and orchestratethe symphony. Actually, it had been slated forintroduction by the Moscow Philharmonic asearly as 1902. It was January 1908, however,before the new symphony received its firstperformance (and then, not in Moscow, butin St. Petersburg). Later in 1908,Rachmaninov received the prestigious GlinkaAward – and the sum of one thousand rubles– for the work. (Second prize went toScriabin and his Poem of Ecstasy.) Thesymphony is dedicated to Rachmaninov’steacher, Sergei Taneyev.

It is in the traditional four movements. In theslow introduction (Largo), Rachmaninovintroduces a dark motto in the low strings.Again, this motto will appear throughout thesymphony. (Tchaikovsky used a similar devicein his Symphony No. 5, but here,Rachmaninov’s treatment of the motto issubtler and more clever than Tchaikovsky’s.)Rachmaninov also varies the motto, andexpands it, creating new themes. Theintroduction is followed by a discursive andpassionate Allegro moderato.

The driving second movement, markedAllegro molto, is like a wild troika-ride across

the Russian steppes. In the middle of themovement, a quiet brass chorale suggestsRussian Orthodox chanting as heard comingfrom a distant church at sunset.

The Adagio is a vast expanse of sensuouslysurging and ebbing melodies. Originally, itslength and its steamy emotional contentcaused it to be regarded as the symphony’sAchilles heel. Today, it is quite possibly thesymphony’s most popular movement, whichgoes to show how fashions change, even inthe basic orchestral repertoire.

The lengthy and ebullient Allegro vivacefinale, by quoting from earlier movements,brings brilliant closure to all that has comebefore, in spite of its episodic construction.The symphony ends with one of thoserhythmic cadences of which the composerapparently was so fond. (Compare it, forexample, to the very end of the PianoConcerto No. 3.)

Rachmaninov began his Symphony No. 3 inAugust 1935 at Senar, his Swiss villa, whileriding a final wave of popular success. HisRhapsody on a Theme of Paganini hadenjoyed a successful premiere the yearbefore, and subsequent performances hadgone far to mute criticism that the

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RACHMANINOV - buywell.com · of the Paganini Rhapsody (its eighteenth variation, in particular) found the new symphony too forbidding. ... Rachmaninov tried not to …