The seemingly effortless outpouring of lyricism in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 belies its excruciating composition process. Throughout the late 1890s, Rachmaninoff was plunged into a terrible state of depression (“a paralyzing apathy,” as he called it) that left him barely able to function. This state was occasioned in part by the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony, during which he had fled from the hall in horror, later destroying the score. Nor could Rachmaninoff have been cheered by the reviews, the most notorious of which was composer César Cui’s: “If there were a conservatory in Hell, Rachmaninoff would get the first prize for his symphony.”
Rachmaninoff’s friends were so concerned about his debilitated state that they talked him into seeing Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a pioneer in psychotherapy and hypnosis as well as a gifted violinist and cellist. “You will begin your concerto,” Dr. Dahl assured Rachmaninoff in a mantra during months of confidence-building. “You will work with great ease … the concerto will be excellent.” So dramatically successful was Dr. Dahl’s therapy that by the summer of 1900, Rachmaninoff found “new ideas stirring within me … more than enough for my new concerto.” These became the genesis of the Second Piano Concerto, but Rachmaninoff was so steeped in self-doubt that he insisted on trying out the second and third movements on the public before writing the first. He presented the work in its entirety in Moscow in 1901, with a moving dedication to Dr. Dahl. Along with Mahler’s final symphonies—composed after Mahler had seen no less august an analyst than Sigmund Freud—the concerto must surely stand as one of the most impressive early advertisements for psychotherapy.
The work does have a kind of therapeutic thrust—a feeling of melodic inspiration bursting out of moroseness. Examples include the dark, bell-like chords for piano alone that open the work and suddenly explode into a passionate stream of interconnected melodies; the soaring return of the elegant tune in the slow movement after pensive woodwind solos and turbulent cadenzas; and the entirety of the finale, which opens with a mysterious march and builds cumulatively toward a spectacular climax that feels like a catharsis for the entire piece.
The concerto has long been a favorite of pianists for its spectacular writing for the instrument—Rachmaninoff wrote it for himself, after all—but the orchestration is equally felicitous. Among the many magical details are the distant horn melody over shimmering strings in the recapitulation of the first movement (one of the most sublime moments in Rachmaninoff), the flute and clarinet solos in the slow movement, and the breathless pedal point following the endlessly quoted second subject in the finale. Most satisfying of all is the seamless blend of soloist and ensemble: This is a concerto in which piano and orchestra are true equals.
Despite its treacherous technical difficulties, many pianists have championed the concerto, most notably Rachmaninoff himself, who performed it in his Carnegie Hall debut on November 13, 1909, with Max Fiedler and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It became his most frequently performed work at the Hall, where he made nearly 100 appearances as composer, pianist, and conductor over a stretch of 33 years. Other notable artists to perform the work include Philippe Entremont, Gary Graffman, John Ogdon, Krystian Zimerman, Leif Ove Andsnes, and numerous Russians: Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sviatoslav Richter, Evgeny Kissin, Yefim Bronfman, and Denis Matsuev. Ashkenazy remarked that he wished he had bigger hands—Rachmaninoff’s could allegedly span 12 keys—to negotiate the notoriously wide-spread piano chords.
The concerto has always been a favorite in popular culture; not surprisingly, as its wealth of quotable tunes makes it endlessly plunderable. It has been used by pop artists such as Frank Sinatra (“Full Moon and Empty Arms,” “I Think of You”), Eric Carmen (“All By Myself”), and Muse (“Space Dementia”); and in movies old and recent, including Grand Hotel, The Seven Year Itch, I’ve Always Loved You, Nodame Cantabile, and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter. Most notable is David Lean’s Brief Encounter, which has a poignant sense of yearning that matches the piece.
The smoldering passion of William Walton’s First Symphony begins within minutes of the first movement and rarely lets up, inaugurating an urgent new sound in British music. Walton wrote it during an unhappy love affair to a young, widowed baroness he could not hope to marry because of his lower-middle-class social status. He was also writing it at a time during the 1930s when what he called a “feeling of hopelessness and chaos in the world” was leaving him anxious and depressed, a feeling that makes the symphony (alas) relevant once again. These two factors probably account for the writer’s block that bedeviled Walton during the composition process.
Like the Rachmaninoff concerto on this program, the symphony premiered in an incomplete state. The London Symphony Orchestra premiered the first three movements in 1933 under Sir Hamilton Harty, and Malcom Sargent later played the three movements with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The work is dedicated to the lover who broke up with him, Baroness Irma von Doernberg. (“This awful tempestuous work was really all her fault,” Walton quipped.) The following year Harty premiered the complete symphony, this time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in a performance greeted with sustained cheers and glowing reviews.
Nonetheless, the symphony took a while to enter the repertory, partly because, as Walton ruefully said, “it is so damn hard to play.” Harty gave the US premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphians under Eugene Ormandy played it for the first time in New York. George Szell also conducted it and continued to champion Walton, later premiering his Second Symphony. The LSO has played and recorded the work many times: André Previn conducted it in a breakthrough performance after his abandonment of the Hollywood world, and Sir Anthony Pappano, who leads it tonight, featured it in his first season as the LSO’s music director in 2014.
Insistent syncopations pulse through the symphony, giving the sober melodic material a startling eloquence. Walton was no stranger to snappy rhythm. He was a fan of jazz and big-band swing, reflected in his early music: His overture Portsmouth Point has infectious syncopation, and Façade—one of the best cabaret comic-jazz pieces because of its dry humor—reveals his interest from the start of his career. He was not alone, but part of a vital tradition of concert jazz in England that is reflected in works by Constant Lambert, Benjamin Britten, Malcom Arnold, and, more recently, Richard Rodney Bennett.
The opening movement has an unrelenting intensity belied by the opening, where quiet horns, strings, and oboes subtly establish a restless rhythm and repeating ostinato that rock toward one shattering climax after another. The structure is sonata form with two themes and a development, but we barely notice given the movement’s overpowering emotionality. Walton’s language, as always, is tonal, but the dissonance is ferocious, finally resolving and breaking free into a major key at the end. The grandeur and use of devices such as pedal points remind some commentators of Sibelius, but as André Previn pointed out, the sound of the orchestra is unique to Walton.
More relentless yet is the Scherzo, which has the unusual marking Presto con malizia (“with malice”); the brutal, off-kilter rhythms continue throughout, unrelieved by the contrast of a calming trio section. The next movement slows down for an Andante con malinconia (“at a moderate pace with melancholy”), presenting a pair of lyrical ideas and building to a heartrending climax that some commentators regard as Walton’s most moving symphonic moment. The finale ends the symphony in a blaze of glory, with triumphant fanfares, a bracing fugue, and a cathartic coda that explodes with extra timpani and shivery tam-tams. The piece is like a fever dream, and in the finale the fever finally breaks. Walton wrote the ending first, so he knew where the symphony was heading. “I always looked forward to the last movement when I was conducting it,” he said.
The First Symphony and other Walton masterpieces from the 1930s—such as the bittersweet Viola Concerto and the rip-snorting Belshazzar’s Feast—are rarely performed in the US. As the late Terry Teachout wrote in 2021, the neglect is unjust: “The First Symphony, above all, is a work of colossal force, one that has always belonged in the international repertoire, and this symphony as well as its companion pieces of the ’30s deserve to be known as masterpieces whose accessibility is a mark not of their superficiality but their distinction. They may not sound all that English, but they sound like no one else … and their time will come.”
—Jack Sullivan
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