Post by erik on Oct 28, 2023 22:52:16 GMT -5
The Third Piano Concerto of Sergei Rachmaninoff is featured this week, in a live recording from earlier in 2023 made here in Los Angeles.
Rachmaninoff: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 IN D MINOR, OP. 30
Although described by his fellow countryman Igor Stravinsky as “six feet of gloom”, the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff knew a thing or two about treading the fine line between populism and art, especially when it came to his chosen instrument the piano. Critics often described Rachmaninoff’s style as “high-calorie Romanticism”; and nowhere can that be said to be truer in the four piano concertos he composed (along with his 1934 “Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini”). His Third Piano Concerto is just such an example. Vividly orchestrated, and featuring a piano solo part that is among the most technically challenging in the entire piano concerto repertoire, the work had been composed by Rachmaninoff in Dresden, Germany, but it received its premiere in the fall of 1909 in New York City, with the composer as the soloist and Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Society (a.k.a. the New York Philharmonic). The challenging scales of the piece, which is typically 37-40 minutes in length, not only confounded a few pianists, but also music critics. This work, as much as its immediate predecessor in the composer’s piano concerto canon, led a lot of people to judge Rachmaninoff to be hopelessly old-fashioned, even though one performance of the work was conducted by no less than Gustav Mahler. But the work’s popularity, as well as that of its composer, shot upward as the 20th century progressed; and before Rachmaninoff’s passing in Beverly Hills, California in 1943, he was already regarded as one of the century’s greatest composers.
Piano: YUJA WANG
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/GUSTAVO DUDAMEL (Deutsche Grammophon)
Included (2-CD set)
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN F SHARP MINOR, OP. 1
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN C MINOR, OP. 18
RHAPSODY ON A THEME OF PAGANINI, OP. 43
Rachmaninoff: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 IN D MINOR, OP. 30
Although described by his fellow countryman Igor Stravinsky as “six feet of gloom”, the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff knew a thing or two about treading the fine line between populism and art, especially when it came to his chosen instrument the piano. Critics often described Rachmaninoff’s style as “high-calorie Romanticism”; and nowhere can that be said to be truer in the four piano concertos he composed (along with his 1934 “Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini”). His Third Piano Concerto is just such an example. Vividly orchestrated, and featuring a piano solo part that is among the most technically challenging in the entire piano concerto repertoire, the work had been composed by Rachmaninoff in Dresden, Germany, but it received its premiere in the fall of 1909 in New York City, with the composer as the soloist and Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Society (a.k.a. the New York Philharmonic). The challenging scales of the piece, which is typically 37-40 minutes in length, not only confounded a few pianists, but also music critics. This work, as much as its immediate predecessor in the composer’s piano concerto canon, led a lot of people to judge Rachmaninoff to be hopelessly old-fashioned, even though one performance of the work was conducted by no less than Gustav Mahler. But the work’s popularity, as well as that of its composer, shot upward as the 20th century progressed; and before Rachmaninoff’s passing in Beverly Hills, California in 1943, he was already regarded as one of the century’s greatest composers.
Piano: YUJA WANG
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/GUSTAVO DUDAMEL (Deutsche Grammophon)
Included (2-CD set)
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN F SHARP MINOR, OP. 1
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN C MINOR, OP. 18
RHAPSODY ON A THEME OF PAGANINI, OP. 43