Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 has been called “the Everest of piano concertos.”
Rachmaninov composed it during the summer of 1909 at Ivanovka, his estate in the steppes of southern Russia, before embarking on his lucrative first American concert tour. Without time to properly learn the solo part, the composer practiced on a “silent keyboard” during the trans-Atlantic voyage. He performed it, first with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony, and then at Carnegie Hall with Gustav Mahler conducting. An early review noted that the composition’s “great length and extreme difficulties bar it from performance by any but pianists of exceptional technical powers.”
Pianist Gary Graffman lamented that he had not learned the Concerto as a student, when he was “still too young to know fear.” The work’s Herculean demands loom large in the 1996 biographical film, Shine, in which Australian concert pianist David Helfgott suffers a mental breakdown while attempting to master it. Józef Hofmann, the respected Polish-American pianist to whom the Concerto was dedicated, declined to play it. In the 1920s, Vladimir Horowitz championed the work, and made the first recording in 1930 with Albert Coates and the London Symphony Orchestra. After hearing his muscular performance, Rachmaninov said that Horowitz “swallowed it whole.” The Concerto was adapted into the standard repertoire after Van Cliburn presented it to great acclaim at the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
In the opening two bars of the first movement (Allegro ma non tanto), the clarinet, bassoon, horn, timpani, and muted strings set the stage with a sense of quiet melancholy. Restless dotted rhythms open the door to the mysterious, winding first theme, presented by the piano. Developing organically in brief, stepwise fragments, the theme forms the seed out of which the entire Concerto develops. Motivic offshoots of the expansive theme emerge and develop in the other moments. There are echoes of ancient Russian Orthodox chant. In the 1940s, musicologist Joseph Yasser pointed out similarities between the theme, and the liturgical chant, Thy Tomb, O Savior.
Regarding the theme, Rachmaninov said,
It simply wrote itself! I wanted to ‘sing’ a tune on the piano like a singer does and find an appropriate orchestral accompaniment, that is, one that would not drown this ‘song.’ That’s all! Just the same, I find that, against my will, this theme does take on a songlike or familiar quality.
As the orchestra takes over the theme, a torrent of embellishing variations flow from the piano. The passionate second theme arrives with a sense of inevitability. Instrumental voices throughout the orchestra join in sensuous counterpoint with the piano. Rachmaninov composed two alternate cadenzas for this movement. One is a 75 measure long tour de force, filled with powerful chords. (This is what we hear in Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 1975 recording, below). In performances, the composer opted for a shorter cadenza. Following the cadenza’s glittering fireworks, the orchestra slips in unobtrusively, with plaintive statements of the theme emerging in a succession of solo wind voices, beginning with the flute.
Moving to the remote key of D-flat, the second movement (Intermezzo. Adagio) begins with a poignant melody, introduced by the oboe, and developed lushly by the strings. The movement unfolds as a series of variations on the theme. The orchestra and solo piano are heard as equal partners in a tender conversation. With motivic echoes of the first movement’s opening theme rising in the clarinet and bassoon, the middle section brings a buoyant waltz in 3/8 time. The sudden interruption pays homage to a similar moment in the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
Without pause, the piano’s spirited cadenza leads to the final movement (Finale. Alla breve). The music launches forward with a bravura and dazzling virtuosity. Motifs from the first movement return to bring the Concerto full circle. As the coda marches to its triumphant conclusion, the home key of D minor is transformed into blazing D major. Rachmaninov’s rhythmic four-note signature punctuates the life-affirming final cadence.
I. Allegro ma non tanto:
II. Intermezzo. Adagio:
III. Finale. Alla breve:
Five Great Recordings
- Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Eugene Ormandy, The Philadelphia Orchestra Amazon
- Vladimir Horowitz with Eugene Ormandy and the New York Philharmonic (1978 live recording)
- Martha Argerich with Riccardo Chailly and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (1982 live recording)
- Zoltán Kocsis with Edo de Waart and the San Francisco Symphony
- Yefim Bronfman with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra
Featured Image: Rachmaninov proofreading copies of the Third Piano Concerto in 1910