3rd piano concerto (Rachmaninoff)

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The Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 30 in D minor composed Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1909 on the estate of Ivanovka .

shape

In its three movements it is based on the form that was common for a solo concert in the Romantic era .

The first use of the piano with the beginning of the famous main theme

Allegro ma non tanto

The first movement begins after a two-bar orchestral introduction with the famous theme, which is performed by the piano in octaves and which runs through the entire concert. Due to its wistful character, its simplicity and its supposedly particularly Russian sound, many believed the topic to be an arrangement of a Russian folk song or hymn . The composer disagreed with this by saying about his theme, “It simply composed itself.” The whole movement is in sonata form , with the recapitulation only extending to the first theme.

Alternative cadences

Modification of the main theme in the original cadenza

Rachmaninoff later wrote a second cadenza for the first movement, which is now printed as the standard cadenza in the sheet music and is played by about two-thirds of the pianists because it is simpler and shorter (because it is faster) and Rachmaninoff himself only always played this cadenza. Vladimir Horowitz said: “The cadenza prepares the end of the concert. The [original] cadence is an ending in itself. It is not good to end the concert before it is over! ”Russian pianists, however, prefer i. d. The original cadenza, which is more powerful in sound, is now printed as ossia . Some pianists mix the cadences (e.g. André Watts ); i. d. R. is started with the faster one and a few bars before Presto are transferred to the original.

Intermezzo (Adagio)

The second movement in song form begins with a melancholy typically Russian theme, which is followed by the opening theme in a different form. Rachmaninoff also wrote the section Più vivo in an alternative version ( Ossia ), which is even more difficult and is almost never played, especially since it is in the deleted passage anyway. The end of the intermezzo contains an integrated fast Scherzo part in F sharp minor ( Poco più mosso ), which is linked to four-movement concertos.

Finale (Alla breve)

The 2nd movement continues without a break into the final movement in sonata form, but the change in time from 3/4 time to alla breve and the changed atmosphere make it clear that a new movement has started here. The piano cadenza that opens the final movement is occasionally criticized as being a bit too conventional. The final paragraph Vivacissimo, the victory hymn of which is composed of the secondary themes of the 1st and 3rd movements, is the climax of the entire concert, which ends with the sound of a radiant D major. The simple beginning of the concerto in D minor shows that the entire work follows the principle of “ per aspera ad astra ”. The finale also contains two ossia passages that make the regular movement even more difficult and are accordingly rarely played: a 7 bars before the beginning of the recapitulation (played e.g. in Kissin's recording) and the beginning of the stretta with 4 eighth notes each instead of one Quarter triplet (as a sound recording only from André Watts).

Deletions

The concert is 40–45 minutes long. (depending on the choice of cadence and tempos) relatively long for a piano concerto. Therefore, as in many of his longer works, Rachmaninoff made cuts here later: The end of the second group of themes ( Tempo precedente, ma un poco più mosso ) and two bars in the cadence of the first movement (bars 10 and 9 before rehearsal number 19) , a line in the middle of the second movement ( Più vivo up to 1 bar before a tempo, più mosso ) and two lines in the third. The first of the dashes in the third movement ( Meno mosso , sample number 45 to 5 bars before 47) eliminates the entire secondary theme in the exposition , so that the same is introduced for the first time in the recapitulation . The cuts are all found in Rachmaninov's own recording, which originally appeared on five shellac records , but are only used sporadically today. They are not even identified in the piano reduction. In the concert, Rachmaninov only paid attention to his second line in the finale ( Meno mosso, a tempo , 2 bars after number 52 to before number 54), since he had come to the conclusion that there were too many E flat major interludes there.

occupation

The piano concerto is written for the following instrumentation: 2 flutes , 2 oboes , 2 clarinets , 2 bassoons , 4 French horns , 2 trumpets , 3 trombones , tuba , kettledrum , cymbals , bass drum , tambourine , piano and strings .

history

The concert was premiered on November 28, 1909 in New York by the New York Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Walter Damrosch . The composer, who had practiced the concert on a silent keyboard during the Atlantic crossing , played the solo part. On January 16, 1910, there was a new performance in Carnegie Hall - with Gustav Mahler at the podium. The first performance in Russia took place in Moscow on April 4, 1910 . After the premiere, the music critics disagreed about the work and reacted rather cautiously, so the New York Herald read after the performance under Mahler that Rachmaninoff's work was one of the “most interesting piano concertos of recent years”, but it suffered a little its "excess length". The concerto is now part of the standard repertoire of most great pianists , but was played by only a dozen pianists in the first decades after its composition - probably due to its technical difficulties. The American pianist Earl Wild , who has played the concerto publicly since 1943, stated that only the composer, Alfred Cortot , Vladimir Horowitz, Walter Gieseking , Jorge Bolet , Egon Petri , Benno Moiseiwitsch , Gina Bachauer , Cyril Smith , George had it before him Thalben-Ball , Gita Gradova and Henrietta Schumann performed. According to calculations, of all great piano concertos it is the one with the most notes per second in the piano part. Józef Hofmann , the pianist to whom Rachmaninoff dedicated his concerto, never performed it on the grounds that it was “not for him”. Presumably Hofmann, who was an excellent pianist but had small hands, was bothered by the often wide fingerings.

New popularity from the movie Shine

The 1996 film Shine (German title Shine - Der Weg ins Licht ), directed by Scott Hicks and starring Geoffrey Rush , gave the 3rd Piano Concerto an enormous boost in popularity. The film tells the true story of the Australian pianist David Helfgott who, after a concert in London in which he played the 3rd piano concerto, had a nervous breakdown due to his schizoaffective disorder , which caused him to spend many years in psychiatric hospitals until he got over his slowly finds great love back in life and makes his comeback . Not only did the 3rd piano concerto, which runs through the entire film, gain enormous fame through the film, so that it is now even better known than Rachmaninov's 2nd concerto , Helfgott also became famous through the film. In the period that followed, a recording of the 3rd piano concerto with Helfgott reached number 1 in the classical music charts in several countries, although critics found the recording little good.

Recordings

Since the 3rd piano concerto belongs to the standard repertoire of most pianists who can cope with the technical difficulties, there are almost 200 commercial recordings. Rachmaninoff recorded it himself in 1939/1940, accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy . The first commercial recording was that of Vladimir Horowitz in 1930 for His Master's Voice , who made it again commercially in 1951 with Fritz Reiner and, on his 50th stage anniversary, live in 1978 with Eugene Ormandy. Three more live recordings between 1941 and 1978 complete his discography of this concert. Rachmaninoff attested to Horowitz that he “ strikes with the ferocity and greed of a tiger. He devoured it as a whole, he had the bravery, the urgency and the daring ”. Most of the studio recordings go to Vladimir Ashkenazi ; in addition to his four versions as a pianist between 1963 and 1985, he accompanied Jean-Yves Thibaudet as conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1994 . Ashkenazi is also the only pianist who recorded both the small (in 1963) and the large cadenza (in the three other recordings). Another brilliant recording by EMI Classics took place in 1979 with Alexis Weissenberg on piano. Leonhard Bernstein conducted the Orchester National De France.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to the numbering of the manuscript pages; see. Norris, Geoffrey: Rachmaninoff, New York 2003, p. 123
  2. ↑ http://gmlile.com/rach/rach3/ossias.html ( Memento from August 5, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ communicated by Jorge Bolet in an interview with Andrew Keener in Gramophone , March 1983: The legendary Cuban-American pianist Jorge Bolet ( Memento from November 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Earl Wild: A Walk on the Wild Side . Palm Springs: The Ivory Classics Foundation 2011. p. 173. Since there were no pianists living in Russia at the time, it is unclear whether Wild only referred to western countries.
  5. ↑ Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 3 & 4 ( Memento from September 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ The Rach 3 recordings page. February 22, 2005, accessed March 17, 2015 .
  7. ^ About this recording. RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No. 3. Retrieved March 17, 2015 (English, translated).