1873-1943
Performance Dates
February 22/23/24- Symphonic Dances
Rachmaninov was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor.
A good friend of Rachmaninov’s is reported to have said that the most important thought behind the composer’s first American tour – and behind the creation of the Third Piano Concerto for that tour – was the dream of owning an automobile. Very few Russians had cars in 1909. Rachmaninov is known to have had a passion for fast travel, and this story of wanting to earn enough money to buy a motor car may just be true. The American concert tour was a busy one. Rachmaninov appeared sometimes as pianist, sometimes as conductor. Besides performing with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Buffalo, and Cincinnati, he made a 20concert tour with the Boston Symphony. The Concerto No. 3 had been started in April 1909 and was completed shortly before he left for America in October. Having had little time to practice the difficult solo part, he took a silent keyboard with him and practiced on the ship. Two months after the premiere, he played the concerto again in New York, this time with the New York Philharmonic under Gustav Mahler. Reviewers noted the deep impression it made on audiences and agreed that this was a work of great musical interest. Although it was once surpassed in popularity by the composer’s Second Concerto, the Third has never been out of favor and has received increased attention from renowned interpreters in recent years. Rachmaninov dedicated the work to Josef Hofmann, whom he considered the world’s greatest pianist, but Hofmann decided this concerto was just not for him and never played it. Its first great interpreter aside from the composer himself was Vladimir Horowitz, who initially played it at the age of 16 for his graduation from the Kiev Conservatory. In his last years, Rachmaninov declined to play it at all, saying that both Horowitz and Walter Gieseking could do greater justice to its technical difficulties.
Those difficulties stem from the creation of a mature and complex work by a composer who was himself a consummate pianist. Add to this that fact that it was written for his own gigantic hands, said to be able to reach four notes past an octave with ease. As a composer of orchestral as well as piano music, Rachmaninov was able to produce an integrated, balanced concerto, neither Piano dominated nor with the piano engulfed by the orchestra. His musical ideas were so abundant while composing it that he wrote out two versions of the first movement cadenza, one longer and more elaborate than the other. |
Sergei Rachmaninov 
