1st piano concerto (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, op. 1 is the first composition in this genre in the work of the Russian composer Sergei Wassiljewitsch Rachmaninoff .
Emergence
Rachmaninoff wrote the concerto in 1890/91 at the age of 17 while he was still studying at the Moscow Conservatory . In 1917, shortly before he emigrated to the USA , he fundamentally revised the work.
To the music
Sentence sequence
- Sentence: Vivace
- Movement: Andante (D major)
- Movement: Allegro vivace (F sharp minor - F sharp major)
analysis
In his first piano concerto, Rachmaninoff orientates himself on models of the Romantic period. The chord and octave chains that introduce the work are reminiscent of the piano concertos by Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann . While the piano setting, with its middle part, known as the “third hand”, is also based on Schumann, the harmony goes back to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . The transition between the middle movement and the finale is based on the corresponding movement transition from the Piano Concerto No. 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven .
Despite the orientation towards the models of the Romantic period, Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto shows the first signs of the composer's developing tonal language. This becomes even clearer in the form of the concert, revised in 1917, in which the concert stylistically approximates Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 .
effect
On March 14, 1892, the first movement of the concert was premiered in Moscow; The concert was first performed in full in London in 1900.
Today the work plays a rather subordinate role in the concert schedules both as a whole and within Rachmaninov's oeuvre.
literature
- Christoph Hahn, Siegmar Hohl (eds.), Bertelsmann Konzertführer , Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1993, ISBN 3-570-10519-9
- Harenberg concert guide, Harenberg Kommunikation, Dortmund, 1998, ISBN 3-611-00535-5
Web links
- 1st Piano Concerto (Rachmaninov) : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project