Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 2 & 3

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) was a rare combination of renowned pianist, conductor and  composer who may have been the last of the major "romantics" in Russia before he fled his homeland after the fall of the czarist regime and the onset of the Soviet Union.

This release by China's Yedang Entertainment Company pairs the amazing second and third piano concertos of Rachmaninov and from recordings decades apart.  The concertos are landmarks in the form that amaze and awe with their impeccable melodies and remarkable harmonic structures.  These performances, at least to this amateur's ear, are excellent and display great sensitivity to the material.

The second concerto came after the young Rachmaninov suffered a terrible psychological trauma when his first sympony, premiered in St. Petersburg in 1897 was a chaotic failure.  Seeking treatment from a neurologist, who used autosuggestion to get the composer to approach his next project with more confidence.  The result was the second piano concerto, which the liner notes, suggest "isa fully integrated work that reveals the composer's authentic idiom."  The dedication to Dr. Nikolai Dahl, the piece, the author of the notes, "was ever so richly merited."

The piece is full of soaring, majestic and stately melodies that are achingly beautiful and affirming, redolent of the composer's hero, Tchaikovsky, especially in the first two movements, while the final movement brings in some powerful and intense dymanics with the orchestra amidst moments of introspection.  Recorded in earely 1959 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Kurt Sanderline, and featuring the amazing playing of soloist Sviatoslav Richter, the performance is spellbinding.

The third concerto appeared in late 1909 with the pianist debuting the work in New York with a repeat performance a couple months later at Carnegie Hall under the direction of the great Gustav Mahler, whose rigorous rehearsing and attention to detail highly impressed Rachmaninov.  The composer worked frantically to prepare the work before his American concert tour and it was said that, after the ink dried and he heade by boat for New York, he was "practicing the solo part during the sea voyage on a silent keyboard for fear of disturbing his fellow passengers."

There were some issues, however.  As scored, the piece was long for the form (even though conductor Mahler was known for massive, impossibly long symphonies at the time) and Rachmaninov shaved off some ten minutes, or about a quarter of the work, to fit the programming mandates of the era.  Critics were also put off by the complexity of the piece, which quickly became known as a technically daunting work for pianists to take on.

In the February 1991 performance, on the heels of perestroika and glasnost and as the USSR neared collapse,Viktoria Postnikova plays with great sensitivity, handling the work with great power and aplomb, and the support of the doncuting of the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra by her husband Gennady Rozhdestvensky, is also stunning.

Even the untrained can hear how demanding playing the piano parts must have been, but it is also the orchestration that can be very challenging with shifting rhythms and remarkable uses of counterpoint.  There is, too, a stunning balance between softer, quieter passages and the more volatile and emotive elements that make this work stand out.  Restored to its full length, it is a powerful, rich and uplifting experience that shows Rachmaninov at his full power as a composer.

Would this have been possible without the turmoil of the first symphony and the valuable work done by Dr. Dahl?

Sergey Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 4 & Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

The Naxos label, so well known and regarded for high-quality and modestly-priced classical recordings, has a series of historical works that might be a problem for audiophiles, but present truly classic performances.

In this case, you can't get much more notable than two of the concertos (though not the notoriously difficult and renowed third) of the great Sergey Rachmaninov, performed by the maestro, with the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra under two of the greatest conductors of the 20th century in Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski.

Recorded between 1939 and 1941, these performances make up for lack of stereo sound what they possess in boundless amounts:  sheer technical and emotional brilliance.  Even though the composer was within a few years of his 1943 passing and his best-known concert days were from the World War I era, it is truly a treat to hear him playing with such precision and passion some of his best-known concertos. 

Amazingly, the liners indicate, Rachmaninov's hands were so large that he could span a chord of a thirteenth (this is twelve keys apart) on his left hand and could do so on a tenth on his right by using the first finger on the lower note and then hitting the upper by thumb crossing.  This kind of technique obviously required enormous amounts of practice as well as physical gift. 

Rachmaninov left his native Russia in the wake of the revolution of 1917 and resided in America for some years before moving to Europe.  With the outbreak of World War II, however, he found himself back in the U.S., where he spent his remaining years touring with a regularity not found since his performing heyday of a quarter-century or so before.

While the composer and pianist is in great form, so is the famed Philadelphia Orchestra under its legendary conductors.  Stokowski, of Irish and Polish extraction, was born in London in 1882 and came to New York in his early 20s as an organist of note.  His first conducting spot was in Paris in 1908 and, within a few years, held the baton in Philadelphia, where he was conductor for a quarter-century.  Stokowski continued to conduct, however, until his death at age 95.

During the last two years of Stokowski's tenure, Eugene Ormandy joined the orchestra.  Born in Hungary in 1899, he was a violinist and arrived in America in the early 1920s.  He worked in an orchestra accompanying silent movies and conducted serious music before becoming conductor with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, where he was well-known for his recordings.  After Stokowski passed the baton on to him, Ormandy led the Philadelphia Orchestra for 35 highly productive and well-known years, retiring in 1973.  He died a dozen years later.

Rachmaninov's first piano concerto was completed in 1891, when still in his teens, and revised it in 1917.  The fourth concerto was finished in 1926 and debuted under Stokowski's baton in Philadelphia in the spring of the next year.  The work, however, was revised in 1941 and recorded under Ormandy's conducting.

The "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" was completed in 1934 and debuted that year with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  It involves variations on the theme of the 24th and final caprice of the famed 19th-century violinist Niccoló Paganini and runs about 25 minutes long, about the same length of the each of the piano concertos.

It is one thing to hear great music performed by a fine orchestra, but quite another to have the composer as the featured soloist.  This fantastic historical recording is a remarkable document of a top-flight ensemble, conductors of the first order, and a superlative composer and performer.