Sergei Rachmaninov

* Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 1, in f#
* Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 18, in c
* Piano Concerto No. 3, op. 30, in d
* Piano Concerto No. 4, op. 40, in g
* Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op. 43

Earl Wild (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Jascha Horenstein
Chandos CHAN 7114 Total time: 67:46 + 65:45

Summary for the Busy Executive: Wow.

The standard line on Rachmaninov runs that as he grew older, his
inspiration burned ever more fitfully.  That has always struck me as a
rather sentimental and naive take on things.  For me, the most significant
fact about Rachmaninov's composing career is that his concert career
interrupted it.  The Russian Revolution forced him to earn a living.  He
couldn't support his family at its accustomed level by his compositions.
The living he chose took up huge blocks of time that could have gone to
composition, and the one prosaic thing an artist really needs in order to
create is time.  Rachmaninov wrote his first three concerti in Russia,
the last two (I consider the Rhapsody a concerto) in exile.  The first
concerto, although extremely polished and by no means routine, still
strikes me as the weakest of the five, the third the best written.
However, while I admire the third, I love the second and fourth, and the
Rhapsody I find the most inspired.

The Rachmaninov second (with Richter and Sanderling) was the first LP I
bought with my own money, so I have a sentimental attachment.  I still
remember browsing through the record bins with a more knowledgeable
junior-high-school friend and asking him, "Is this any good?" He could have
said a lot of things, including "Dummy!" but he settled for a tactful "I
think you'll like it." I did indeed.  I wore that LP out, to the extent
where the grooves smoothed out to the slickness of a marble floor, and any
music they still held was obscured by a thick curtain of hiss and crackle.

Another frequent critical bromide against Rachmaninov is that he
simply followed Tchaikovsky; he brought that style to a certain height
and contributed little of his own.  I've never understood this one.
To me, both composers at their best sound like nobody but themselves.
Tchaikovsky's melodic gift to me ranges more widely than Rachmaninov's and
owes less to previous figures like Chopin.  Rachmaninov owes a tremendous
debt to Chopin, particularly in matters of phrasing, and to the chant of
the Russian Orthodox Church (the model for his more "Russian" themes,
whatever the tempo).  But Rachmaninov's music rambles less, and furthermore
it changes as the composer goes along, moving from Romantic to a tentative
Modernism in such works as the fourth piano concerto and the Symphonic
Dances.  In this sense, he walks a path similar to Puccini's, incorporating
new approaches to extend that already essentially his.  Certainly, the
works here show these changes, as the composer picks up more experience,
both in writing and in hearing music.

Rachmaninov composed his first concerto when he was 18 but, before your jaw
drops in amazement, he revised it substantially at 44.  People usually play
the revision, as they do here.  Still, it's a remarkable work and manages
to retain its youth.  It takes from many previous concerto staples - a
little from the Tchaikovsky first, the Liszt first, a snippet of the
Schumann - but it does so with incredible assurance and without the
mish-mosh of pastiche.  The opening fanfare, bringing to mind the one in
the Tchaikovsky fourth symphony, strikes the same rhetorical note, if not
the exact same musical ones.  The first lyrical idea lies very close to the
main theme of Tchaikovsky's Manfred, and you find musical ideas, so close
as to count as kin, to round off the first subject group here as in the
Tchaikovsky.  But you've only to compare Rachmaninov's maiden concerto to
something like the Rubinstein concerti to hear the clarity of the ideas,
the musical thought expressed directly, without any sort of groping or
stuck-on fuzz.  Furthermore, it's not just second-hand news.  An individual
with a strong artistic profile talks to us, despite all the borrows.  This
probably comes down to a matter of feeling, more than any identifiable
technique.  As for me, I hear a kind of rhythmic vigor, like a stamping
of heavy boots, in all the concerti that mark each work as Rachmaninov's.
Also, the piano writing is superb, which is not always so with Rachmaninov,
probably because of his stupendous keyboard technique.  The sonatas, for
example, suffer from thick textures arising from the composer's desire
to occupy every finger all the time.  The concerto has plenty of power,
especially with Wild at the keyboard, but the textures always tell.  My
favorite movement, however, is probably the second, with a gorgeous melody,
fully the equal of any in the later concerti.  It represents a real risk,
in that it threatens to degenerate into mere noodling.  Yet it never sinks,
and it retains the air of having been made up on the spot.

The second concerto blows away the derivative dust of the first.
Rachmaninov not only has found his characteristic voice, he proclaims it.
Considering its genesis in the composer's creative and emotional breakdown,
one hears no hesitance in it at all.  It has become in my mind the
archetypal Romantic piano concerto.  As I say, I heard Richter first, and
I've never heard him bettered.  Most other pianists come across as prettier
or wimpier, with the notable exception of Rachmaninov himself.  I might
as well confess to my emotional superficiality: the opening makes or
breaks the work for me.  Richter starts at some dynamic just this side
of audibility and builds such tension that the opening breaks out like a
mighty stream punching through a dam.  The themes throughout the concerto
are memorable, every single one of them, and it all sounds like one
gigantic song.  Nevertheless, one hears all sorts of nasty remarks lobbed
in its direction, as if Rachmaninov has scammed the innocent music lover,
who doesn't understand the Higher Aspects of Art anyway.  It's kind of a
Rodney Dangerfield of concertos.  Having tried myself, I can attest that
writing tunes of such eloquence isn't as easy as it may appear.  If it
were, Rachmaninov would have undoubtedly written more of them.
Nevertheless, for the musically pure who condescend to Rachmaninov at all,
it's the third concerto that gets the respect.  If the recordings provide
any evidence, the third movement seems the hardest to bring off.  Getting
the opening march tempo is first problem.  I usually prefer something very
deliberate, which picks up speed as it goes along.  In this concerto, the
more weight, the more deliberation, the better.  Horenstein and Wild do
something very interesting (for all I know, it may even be in the score,
although I've not heard this in any other interpretation).  They begin, for
me, a bit light, but take on greater weight and anxiety as they go.  It has
the interesting effect of finding something of the unfamiliar in what you
may have begun to take for granted, and the stratagem refocuses you with a
snap.

One year after the premiere (1909, New York Symphony Society, under
Damrosch), Rachmaninov played the third with the New York Philharmonic,
conducted by Mahler.  Mahler praised it - praise which Rachmaninov
cherished to the end of his days.  Most writers consider this Rachmaninov's
best work, mainly because he creates an entire concerto out of very few
ideas which appear in at least two of the three movements.  That's not the
only reason, of course, but it's the one that keeps coming up.  To me, it's
full of good things, like a stuffed Christmas stocking.  But, for me,
it doesn't soar as high as the second.  I think the tunes not quite as
distinguished, although at that level, I'm probably niggling.  I admire the
orchestration as well, something that Rachmaninov doesn't get enough credit
for.  He's a genius orchestrator, who also happens to be not only capable
but surprising.  I also like the asymmetry of the music.  I'm not always
sure when a phrase will stop, or how.  You have your choice of just about
every virtuoso who ever recorded for this concerto, and I own several
accounts: Horowitz (1951), Rachmaninov on RCA, Weissenberg with Pretre,
Janis and Munch, as well as this one.

The fourth piano concerto, like the first, is hardly talked about, except
in terms of failure.  John Culshaw, in his pioneering, illuminating essay
on Rachmaninov and Medtner, slams the fourth as unconvincingly "cheerful,"
a trait I wouldn't have ascribed to the concerto if I'd lived to a ripe
old age.  I'll sink my credibility now and say that, for me, it's a great
work, as are all the Rachmaninov concerti.  Again, it interests me as an
example of Rachmaninov's modernist extensions of his late-Romantic idiom.
Emotionally, as Culshaw demonstrates, it's not as straightforward as the
other four.  A grotesque vein runs through Rachmaninov's music, and he
gives it full rein here.  Unlike the second and third, the fourth is
neither heroic nor epic.  It's a concerto of worry, nerves, and trouble.
Rachmaninov doesn't bother to assume the mantle of bard here, but speaks
in a voice closer to his own character.  The opening tries to bound out
like a conqueror and never makes it, due to the neurotic chattering of the
trumpets.  In the second movement, a melody dazedly wanders trying to find
harmonic stability and never does.  The finale comes off as a brilliant
phantasmagoria, with the orchestration especially inventive.  Again, the
music looks for a place to rest without luck, even trying to begin the
whole concerto all over again.  One hears adumbrations of the Rhapsody and
the Symphonic Dances, but the music comes across as more raw.  It turns
out, if you listen to this work for several days, that Rachmaninov has
organized this work almost as thoroughly as the third concerto.  Again,
he takes from the same small bag of ideas for the entire concerto.  The
second, lyrical subject of the first movement derives from the main
subject.  Subsidiary ideas from the first movement show up in the second
and third.  Such is Rachmaninov's invention, however, that it's hard to
catch him at it, except where he gives you obvious hints in the finale.

I suspect that when most listeners think of Paganini's theme, they think
of Rachmaninov's rhapsody.  At the time Rachmaninov wrote, he competed
with variations on the same theme by Liszt, Schumann, and Brahms.  All
three of those works, despite their considerable interest, are regarded
as curiosities, more or less, while Rachmaninov's has undoubtedly become
standard rep.  It may not run as deep as the Goldbergs, but, on the other
hand, the Goldbergs aren't white-hot.  For me, the Rhapsody counts as
fever-music.  The contrasts among the heroic, the grotesque, and the lyric
elements of Rachmaninov's language in general concentrate here.  It almost
takes advantage of the poor listener, so sure is the composer's sense of
concerto theater.  Of course, it's not a rhapsody at all, but a highly
organized set of variations: twenty-four, to be exact, divided by tonal
centers into four large sections.  It's chock full of jokes, sometimes
in-jokes.  It even begins with one: the first variation precedes the
statement of the theme - a picking out of the harmonic bass, just as
Beethoven does in his Eroica finale.  One encounters throughout a kind of
musical punning.  The theme turns out to connect with the Dies irae chant.
The sectioning-by-tonality doesn't necessarily coincide with the rhetorical
structure.  Transitions between variations and tonality is often by thirds
and sometimes by tritone - the latter known as "the devil in music,"
perhaps another reference to the Dies irae.  The piano writing can stop
your heart, if you're not careful.  It's novel and almost cruelly
effective.  The orchestration is again brilliant, with particularly
effective use of trumpets, pizzicato, string moto perpetuo, harp, and
glockenspiel.  It reminds me of those eccentrically brilliant Russians
during the last gasp of the tsars - the amateur mathematicians who kept in
their desk drawers solutions to problems that stumped professionals all
over the rest of the world, the cataloguers like Slonimsky who compiled a
Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, the composers like Scriabin and
Stravinsky out to re-invent music, the painters like Kandinsky who wished
to free themselves from the physical world, the writers like Nabokov and
Tsvetayeva who created highly detailed, absurd fictive worlds.  There's
that kind of jittery electricity about the work - high spirits of a high
order - and then, of course, the genius tune, which turns out to be
something like an inverse retrograde of the thematic trill.  Wow, indeed.

Although you can find individual performances as good or better than some
of the ones here, this and Rachmaninov (minus the Rhapsody, available on
Naxos) playing his own rank as my top two choices for the complete set.
Wild and Horenstein replace Ashkenazy and Previn's very fine accounts for
a modern set.  One doesn't normally associate Horenstein with the flash of
Rachmaninov, but he and the Royal Phil strike sparks.  Wild, of course,
plays this stuff like a natural.

As opposed to the lightweight reading one normally gets, the first
concerto comes off with surprising heft.  Maybe people, including me, have
underestimated this work all along.  The second concerto misses Richter's
storms and lowering skies in the first movement, but Wild and Horenstein's
final movement blazes, with details of orchestration one normally passes
over not only clear, but emotionally telling.  The fugato really snaps your
head back.  I've always been a fan of Janis in the third.  Wild I think as
good, but he follows the composer's cuts.  With the current penchant for
the Complete Everything (a penchant I share), it may put some listeners
off.  I do think in this case, the cuts strengthen the architecture of the
work, but on the other hand I miss some great passages, particularly in the
cadenzas.  Still, the collaboration between Wild and Horenstein stands out.
With them, the concerto moves from the virtuoso star turn to distinguished
collaboration.  They make room for one another, they breathe together,
they think as one.  "Breath" and "breadth" might be the watchwords for
this performance.  As good as Wild is, Horenstein matches him with the
orchestra.  One gets much less choice with the fourth.  This fourth
concerto performance is simply the best I've heard, with both soloist
and conductor biting into each phrase with relish, as well as with great
understanding.  Horenstein, in particular, strikes the right emotional
bells throughout.  With such a fourth, you would expect a great Rhapsody.
You get it.  Fleisher and Szell also present a great Rhapsody, but it's
mono, and Wild and Horenstein have the same virtues - mainly, that they
take the work seriously, as more than a swooner and dazzler.  It's like
watching a high-power line sparking.  I particularly appreciate the lack
of dawdle and moonshine in the 18th variation.  Horenstein and Wild take
it just this side of prosaic, so that when they indulge in their (rather
chaste) rubati, it hits with all the more punch.

The sound is gorgeous.  Chandos has transferred performances originally
made for a Reader's Digest "club," which I never heard, so I have no idea
what the originals were like.  On these CDs, you hear everything.  Detail
normally lost in a miasma of orchestral sound comes through almost like a
slap in the face, simply because I never knew it was there.  For me, this
is the great stereo set.

Steve Schwartz