Rachmaninoff, Concertos 1 and 4 (Original Versions)

Rachmaninoff notably revised his Second Piano Sonata (1913) in 1931, excising some fragments and condensing others significantly, but he left the general scheme of the work and its thematic material mostly intact.  With the Second Symphony, he merely recommended, at least to my knowledge, several cuts and optional repeats.

If those alterations were deemed revisions, his changes to the fourth concerto in 1928 and finally in 1941 should be considered almost a complete rewrite.  In fact, the finale was mostly rewritten, borrowing little from the original score and giving way to a much simpler form.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a passage in the second subject of the final movement (1941 version) with a horn solo.  I was surprised to find this passage entirely absent in the original, 1926 version.

Second subject from finale (1926)

Second subject from finale (1941)

In its place, the piano takes center stage with a familiar Dies Irae-inspired melody spelled out in thick, stepwise chords. The key of D-flat is still strongly suggested, but the horn is gone—which makes me sad—and there aren’t any voices in the orchestra that assume its role from the 1941 version, with either a soloistic line or pentatonic character.  Instead, a solo trumpet and a choir of woodwinds chime in intermittently with supporting, motivic pronouncements.

Following the second subject, a clarinet solo, entirely nonexistent in the 1941 version, marks the transition into the next set of themes.  In fact, there are several places where Rachmaninoff has written solos into the manuscript score for instruments other than piano but has omitted them in the final version.

Clarinet solo from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4

This is all small change though.  The most drastic difference in the manuscript version of the finale is the return of the second subject, adding at least two more minutes of music to the piece.  For me, this restatement of some of the earlier themes rounds out the structure of the movement and I think results in a greater sense of resolution for listeners who, consciously or not, expect a sonata or rondo-like pattern.

It’s clear from looking at each work that exists as an original-revised pair that Rachmaninoff strove for greater economy in his music as he grew older.  All his revised works are considerably shorter in length and got this way mostly through a paring down and simplification of the more complex passages.  My feeling is that his revised editions are furnished with more “natural” harmonic progressions and are condensed in the very spots where he had at first been the most verbose musically.

Rachmaninoff at the piano (senar.ru)

And although he wasn’t necessarily enthusiastic about his first attempts, we as his audience receive works like this with fresh ears.  I don’t think it makes sense to value one version objectively over the other, and I think most people would have a hard time making that kind of decision anyway when these two versions are, chiefly as works of art, so thoroughly constructed.  The two are just telling snapshots of the same man at two different points in time.

Unfortunately, that man was met with cold criticism for both versions of the piece. Following a New York performance of the first version on March 22, 1927, the music critic Pitts Sanborn wrote:

The concerto in question is an interminable, loosely knit hodgepodge of this and that, all the way from Liszt to Puccini, from Chopin to Tchaikovsky.  Even Mendelssohn enjoys a passing compliment.  The orchestra scoring has the richness of nougat and the piano part glitters with innumerable stock tricks and figurations.  As music it is now weepily sentimental, now of an elfin prettiness, now swelling towards bombast in a fluent orotundity.

Such as it is, I rather enjoy the richness of nougat.

Source: Bertensson, Sergei & Jay Leyda. Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music. Indiana University Press. 2001.

Our good friend Dmitri wrote a bunch of brooding, controversial symphonies, but in this concerto, there is a nice slice of his more cheerful side, as can be found too in the Festive Overture and ninth symphony.  Actually, the Andante movement is reminiscent of a Romantic adagio, but the rest of the work is a sprightly spattering of thematic variations and fingering exercises—the latter conceived as a joke for the composer’s son.  Honestly though, how fun is this melody?

Shostakovich, Piano Concerto No. 2, Opening theme

What a curious concerto.

Rachmaninoff started the 4th concerto in his New York apartment

The attacca entrance into the finale from the Largo movement is probably the most unsettling part of the piece.  Although the orchestration is thin and delicate in this section, with individual voices appearing to chime in intermittently, it is chromatic, rhythmically irregular, and harmonically ambiguous.  The inconstant articulations and nimble runs in the piano solo give the impression of a race lacking direction.

But Rachmaninoff is always going somewhere, always building towards something, even in moments of chaos like this.  Very briefly, the music settles into G-flat major—the first suggestion we get of any tonal center. This is soon followed by the same material in E and a series of thick piano chords, moving in incremental progression towards a new tonal center.  Upon finally arriving at the key of D-flat major, we are treated to an interlude that is conspicuously uncomplicated for the twenty minutes of music that came before it.  The piano, plainly establishing the new key, clears a path for this simple melody in the horn:

Horn solo from Rachmaninoff's 4th

And again, moments later, with slight alteration:

Horn solo from Rachmaninoff's 4th, cont'd.

Whether you care for the dissonance and jazzy undertones of this piece, there is at least this one, shining moment of clarity.  It is pure and simple in both structure and purpose.  It consists almost entirely of quarter notes and half notes; it starts with a five-to-one pick-up; it is arch-like in shape; and it ends on the tonic.  And as if simplicity in this form wasn’t enough, Rachmaninoff constructs this horn call using only the pentatonic scale—one of the most commonly occurring musical scales, and one with a significant place in the musical past of almost every culture in the world.  It is a scale that is distinctly human.

For the duration of this passage and the Dies Irae-like melody that follows it, Rachmaninoff manages to suspend all musical unrest.  He reverts to a sound that is both familiar and sincere, demonstrating that beauty need not derive from embellishment and complexity. In these few, short moments, with horn and piano in hushed dialogue, I am, as the listener, washed over with an overwhelming sense of resolution.

For me, this section of the concerto, which juxtaposes a palette of daring, new sounds with a humble nod to something more traditional, reveals the composer’s lifelong nostalgia.  He was likely looking back to the music of his youth, but he also longed for his home in Russia, where, as an exile, he was no longer welcome.

Christian Tetzlaff (alexandra-vosding.de)

The piece from last night’s concert that motivated my purchase was Tchaikovsky‘s violin concerto, performed by Christian Tetzlaff—a violinist of modest stature with a powerful sound.  The performance generally matched my expectations of the piece, though Tetzlaff took the first movement cadenza and a few other passages at a much faster pace than most of the recordings I have heard.  It didn’t, however, sound like a reading by Heifetz, who is praised (and occasionally criticized) in many an Amazon product review for his breakneck performance of this piece with Fritz Reiner conducting.  To me, Heifetz was more scrupulous and calculated, if you will, about his articulations.  Tetzlaff hammered through with unbridled verve.

Despite the concerto being my initial reason for attending the concert, my experience was really sculpted by the other parts of the program, including a new work called Post-Scriptum by Victor Kissine, Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, and Liszt’s tone poem Tasso: Lamento e trionfo.

The new work by Kissine saw its world premiere last night.  The piece was somewhat tonal, but dissonant throughout, with every emerging trace of melodic clarity stamped out by percussive inquietude.  There were more delicate moments too that brought forth the spirit of a horror movie, and in fact, there was at least one place in the piece where the bow of a contrabass was drawn vertically across the outer edge of a suspended cymbal to produce the same eerie squeal that you might hear in The Ring or F.E.A.R (yes, the video game).

Inside Davies Symphony Hall (_e.t@Flickr)

Apart from the time I played the Ma mère l’oye orchestral suite with PYMO, this was the first time I had heard an orchestral work by Ravel performed live. Not that I ever doubted it, but I now believe fully in the composer’s genius in orchestration, which is manifest only partially in even the best recordings. And recordings just don’t do justice to the truly jubilant (and utterly loud) moments in the Valses. As far as conductors go, MTT maintains a pretty conservative presence at the podium, but he still manages to generate a huge sound from his musicians.

The tone poem by Liszt that closed the program reminded me of something I once read, regarding a tone poem by Tchaikovsky.  At the time of this writing, the Wikipedia article on Tchaikovsky’s program work after Francesca Da Rimini mentions that its “swirling chromaticism” may suggest the influence of Liszt.  Wherever this claim originated, it is likely that the author had Tasso: Lamento e trionfo in mind.  Descending, chromatic motifs from this piece, as well as an overall, aggravated tone, are echoed frequently in Tchaikovsky’s piece.  My predilection for the Russian composer’s style must have preempted my ability to digest Tasso though, as its capricious emotional landscape literally left me a little confused.