Two other works began to demand more of his time. The first was a new Symphony in E minor, dedicated to Taneyev, which was drafted by January 1907 and finished in April. A Piano Sonata followed quickly between January and February, the score being completed on May 14th.
He also revised the Trio Elégiaque No 2 for a performance in Moscow on February 12th/25th by Goldenweiser with Brandukov and the violinist Carl Grigorovitch, in a concert which also saw the first performance of the Opus 26 songs, with four separate singers (Ivan Grizunov, Anna Kiselovskaya, Alexander Bogdanovitch and Elena Azerskaya) all accompanied by Goldenweiser at a concert sponsored by the dedicatees, the Kerzin family. This was the first occasion Rachmaninoff did not attend the première of one of his works.
The songs form a charming group and are remarkable in the composer’s output for their comparative simplicity of expression and epigrammatic utterance. A favourite of Rachmaninoff’s “Night is Mournful”, was later transcribed for cello and piano at Brandukov’s suggestion.
The great Russian impressario Serge Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes.
The impressario Serge Diaghilev planned a series of Russian concerts in Paris and Rachmaninoff accepted an invitation to perform his Second Concerto there on May 26th and to conduct “Spring”, with Chaliapin singing for the first time the rôle that was written with his voice in mind. After this, the friendship between Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin was completely restored.
During Rachmaninoff’s days in Paris he met many Russian friends, including Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin, who had recently returned from the United States. Scriabin went to New York at the invitation of his old friend Modest Altschuler, the founder of the Russian Symphony Orchestra in New York. Scriabin was estranged from his wife, and when his mistress Tatiana Schloezer joined him in January he was forced to leave. Safonoff, now director of the New York Philharmonic, was extremely well-connected in New York circles, so when Scriabin had been offhand to Safonoff’s wife Vera, he and Tatiana were obliged to leave in a hurry. In Paris Scriabin heard two of his works: the Piano Concerto, played by Josef Hofmann and The Divine Poem, both conducted by Arthur Nikisch, who also conducted Rachmaninoff’s Concerto. The faithful Altschuler had also performed Rachmaninoff’s Caprice Bohémien in the United States for the first time, in New York on December 20, 1906, a fortnight after Frances, the last of the Gershvine children, sister to Ira, ‘George’ and Arthur, was born — ten years to the day after Ira. The concert season in Philadelphia was, as usual, attracting some novelties: Arthur Rubinstein made his debût with the orchestra, conducted by Fritz Scheel, in the 1906-07 season.
Natalia was expecting a second child at the end of June 1907: she travelled to Ivanovka to await the birth so Rachmaninoff had to journey to Paris alone. While in Paris he made the acquaintance of Josef Hofmann and he also saw a black-and-white reproduction of a version of Böcklin’s The Isle of the Dead, a painting which made a deep impression on him. Rachmaninoff’s success with the Second Concerto was remarkable. Oskar von Riesemann, who had become friendly with Rachmaninoff in Dresden, and to whom the composer had played the piano Sonata in an unfinished state, described the performance vividly. After his visit to Paris Rachmaninoff was glad to rejoin Natalia at Ivanovka. He was delighted with the lilacs and roses which his sister-in-law Sophia Satina planted at the entrance to the estate. He was certain the child would be a boy, as he wrote to Morozov on June 18th:
Rachmaninoff appears to have been a frequent visitor at the home of the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovitch at Brasovo. This photograph, dating from February 1912, shows the composer taking tea with members of the family.
… First of all, my Natasha, thank God, feels well and is expecting my future son from day to day. The midwife, who has already arrived, waits also. I am waiting, too! In fact all the Ivanovskies are waiting … when my son is born, I will let you know …
But on June 21st/July 4th, Natalia gave birth to a second daughter, christened Tatiana. Rachmaninoff could now concentrate on preparing the score of the new Symphony which he was to conduct in St Petersburg and Moscow the following January and February. The score was still not quite finished when they returned with their new daughter to Dresden for the winter. The birth of their second child meant a change in the family routine and Rachmaninoff composed no more during 1907. January 1908 was taken up with preparations for the first performance of the Symphony, which he conducted in St Petersburg on January 26th/February 8th, and repeated in Moscow a week later, before conducting a third performance in Warsaw.
Years later, Rachmaninoff agreed to cuts in the Second Symphony, but it is only since the recording made in the USSR in the 1950s, conducted by Alexander Gauk, was released in the West that music-lovers outside Russia have been able to hear the work regularly in its complete, original form. The first movement exposition repeat is still almost always ignored even though it should quite clearly be observed — as should Rachmaninoff’s metronome markings. The Second Symphony demands a virtuoso orchestra and conductor but it is frequently performed too slowly, to fatal effect. It is much longer than the First Symphony and plays for about an hour. Such is the surety with which Rachmaninoff handles his vast structure that the work seems not a whit too long. This is not special pleading: it struck its first audiences so. The Moscow critic Yuri Engel, writing after the second performance, remarked:
… After listening with unflagging attention to its four movements, one notes with surprise that the hands of the watch have moved sixty-five minutes forward. This may be slightly overlong for the general audience, but how fresh, how beautiful the music is …
Like the First, the Second Symphony uses a motto theme but with much greater subtlety (I have to thank Sir Alexander Gibson for revealing to me the extent of Rachmaninoff’s genius in this work). It is a great and majestic Symphony, full of power and supremely confident, and displays unusual connections with The Miserly Knight. They have the same tonality (E minor — the second scene of the opera is in D minor), and the motto theme of the Symphony clearly derives from a passage towards the end of Act I of the opera. The Symphony is beautifully proportioned, which the later cuts demonstrably do not enhance; beautifully scored, full of the most individual melodies which are fascinatingly worked, it has a breadth and emotional power which set it apart from the music of Rachmaninoff’s contemporaries.
Rachmaninoff played the Second Concerto for the first time in England at the Queen’s Hall on May 26th, conducted by Serge Koussevitsky who, making his British debût, was beginning to show that mastery of orchestral colour and timbre which marked him out as one of the greatest conductors of his day. Koussevitsky had been offered nothing less than a symphony orchestra as a wedding present by his millionaire father-in-law, but he had not yet taken him up on the offer. He was still learning his craft, but he and Rachmaninoff in this performance showed that “freedom from extravagance” which The Times critic praised and which was a feature of the subsequent work of both artists (although it had never been a part of Rachmaninoff’s make-up). Rachmaninoff missed the British debût of Odessa-born and Leschetizky-trained pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch at Queen’s Hall. His return to Russia coincided with the news of the sudden death in St Petersburg of Rimsky-Korsakov aged 64 on June 8th/21st. One more of the ‘old guard’ had gone. At Ivanovka during the summer Rachmaninoff had time to proof-read the Second Symphony for Gutheil. He also composed a song for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Moscow Art Theatre entitled “Letter to K.S. Stanislavsky”, which Chaliapin sang in Moscow on October 14th/27th, and three days later Konstantin Igumnov gave the first performance of the Piano Sonata Opus 28. Igumnov was a pupil of Pabst and himself became a noted piano teacher, numbering Lev Oborin (who made an early recording of Rachmaninoff’s second Trio Elégiaque with David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Knushevitsky), among his pupils. Rachmaninoff missed the première as he had returned to Dresden to prepare for a busy season. Igumnov repeated the Sonata in Leipzig and Berlin, but Rachmaninoff did not hear eith
er performance owing to prior commitments.
Rachmaninoff conducted the Second Symphony for the fourth time in Antwerp (his debût there), and went on to Berlin for a performance of the second Trio. He then travelled to Holland for performances of the Second Concerto with Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and The Hague. Arthur Nikisch surprisingly withdrew the Second Symphony from scheduled performances in Leipzig and Berlin, doubtless slighted at finding, according to Rachmaninoff, that the score was not dedicated to him. However, the worth of the work overcame any petty jealousy, for Nikisch became a noted exponent of the Symphony in later years.
On his return to Dresden just before Christmas, news came from St Petersburg that the Glinka Award Committee had awarded him the major prize in that year’s list — the coveted 1,000 roubles — and early in the new year he began work on an orchestral tone-poem suggested by Böcklin’s picture The Isle of the Dead.
This was the second descriptive work by Rachmaninoff in succession, for the piano Sonata was based on Goethe’s Faust. The Sonata is conceived on a big scale, like the Second Symphony and the Chopin Variations, and there is good reason for linking the three movements (as in Liszt’s ‘Faust’ Symphony) to the characters of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, but it would be a mistake and a violation of the composer’s intentions to read any programme into the work. It is in the favoured key of D minor and the movements, especially the outer ones, have a degree of spaciousness that signals a new voice in his music, comparable only with the vast scale of the Second Symphony. These works together with the First Symphony show Rachmaninoff’s ability to write music on the largest scale in a manner that, if one is prepared to give the composer the chance, refutes utterly any lingering notion that he was only capable of writing miniatures.
As the new year dawned he was in Russia for several concerts, which made him miss the première in Dresden on January 25th of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, but he was doubtless curious to learn of a concert conducted by Siloti in St Petersburg on February 6th/19th which included two new orchestral works by Igor Stravinsky: the twelve-minute Scherzo Fantastique Opus 3, and Fireworks Opus 4. In the audience, hearing Stravinsky’s music for the first time, was Serge Diaghilev, looking for new talent to promote in Paris.
Arthur Nikisch with members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Work on The Isle of the Dead continued when the tour ended and the score was completed in Dresden on April 17th, 1909. Rachmaninoff conducted the première in Moscow on April 18th/May 1st (not the following day: the calendar difference is confusing).
Dresden is a short journey from Leipzig, where Nikisch was director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Rachmaninoff was able to view another version of The Isle of the Dead exhibited in a Leipzig gallery. The Swiss artist, Arnold Böcklin died in 1901 aged 29. He painted six versions of this picture, and as Rachmaninoff had been deeply impressed on seeing a copy of one of these versions in Paris, he was curious, on being told of the picture by an acquaintance in Dresden, Nikolai von Struve, to see another.
The Isle of the Dead: Arnold Böcklin.
It is a sombre picture, often dismissed by writers on Rachmaninoff’s music, but which is in the opinion of several experts on Germanic art a fine example of its period. Emotionally it occupies a similar world to Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht of 1899, with its unrelieved gloom and deep pessimism. The picture shows a small boat, bearing a coffin placed at right angles, across the River Styx, towards a massive and imposing island, whose gigantic elm-trees dwarf the craft, which is proceeding gently towards a rough-hewn landing-stage contained in a tiny natural harbour. On either side of the island, fashioned from the twin sides of the rock which entombs the trees, are sepulchrous burial-chambers towards which the boat drifts. Even the solitary upright Charon on the boat appears like a shrouded cadaver, albeit the point to which all eyes are inevitably drawn. But its placement, erect and vaguely central, leads one inexorably up towards the trees and round again in a never-ending circular motion. There is rather more to this painting than many music-writers have glimpsed, but it could hardly be described as a great masterpiece. It was well-known at the time, and exerted a powerful fascination on many people. The German composer Max Reger composed a symphonic suite, Opus 128, entitled Four Tone Poems after Böcklin, in which the third movement, called The Isle of the Dead, is inspired by the same painting. Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem shows once again his mastery of large-scale structures, in an extended movement of vast symphonic proportions. The preoccupation with death, inherent in the title, is not morbid, as in Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique or Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, and its treatment is more objective. It does not sink into hopelessness, and the concluding section, after a finely-judged climax of tremendous passion and force, has an air of calm and gentle repose (musically echoing the opening of the work, but emotionally fulfilling a very different function), consolatory, certainly, but without the self-pity which is the standard emotional state of the typical Romantic. The placement of the Dies Irae theme is both logical and masterly, and it is the essentially civilised quality of Rachmaninoff’s music which has surely guaranteed its survival.
Shortly after the première of The Isle of the Dead (his Opus 29) Rachmaninoff was appointed Vice-President of the Imperial Russian Music Society. He took his duties which included responsibility for provincial musical colleges seriously. A more important event now loomed: Rachmaninoff had earlier been approached about a tour in the United States by Henry Wolfsohn, and he had accepted in principle. During the summer holiday at Ivanovka he heard that Wolfsohn had died, and he assumed the plans would fall through, but Mrs Wolfsohn took over her late husband’s business. During the negotiations Rachmaninoff worked, in great secrecy as usual, on a new work which he undertook to première in New York. This was the Third Piano Concerto, in D minor, Opus 30. This Concerto was written remarkably quickly and he looked forward to at least one benefit from the tour, the purchase of a motor car, even though the prospect of the gruelling itinerary did not fill him with joy.
In spite of his doubts concerning the trip he arrived in the United States at the end of October, taking with him the score of the new Concerto. Modest Altschuler met him at the dockside. As it had only been finished on September 23rd/October 6th, there was no time for the Concerto to be printed, so the scheduled performances had to be given from the manuscript. It was a formidable tour: the Wolfsohns had arranged twenty concerts in and around the important cities of the north-eastern USA, and in view of the tightness of the schedule Rachmaninoff practised assiduously on a dummy keyboard during the Atlantic crossing. His American debût was a recital in Smith College, Northampton, in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, on November 4th. Northampton is a small town 160 miles north-east of New York City, from where he went to Boston to play the Second Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Max Fiedler (no relation to Arthur — who, although born in Boston, his father Isaac being a member of the orchestra at this time, was preparing to go to Berlin for five years’ study in 1910). He also played the Concerto with the Boston Symphony and Fiedler in Baltimore and New York. He stayed in New York to prepare for the most important event of the tour: the première of the new Concerto which was to be given on November 28th with the New York Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Walter Damrosch, in the New Theatre Manhattan. Two days later they repeated the work at Carnegie Hall, but for many people the most important performance of the work was the third, given by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, under its recently-appointed musical director, Gustav Mahler, Safonoff’s successor. This took place on January 16th, 1910, also at Carnegie Hall.
The critics as well as the public therefore had a rare triple chance to hear the new work. The press reaction was distinctly cool, unlike that of the audiences who knew a great work when they heard one. Following the first performance, on the Sunday afternoon, the New York Herald reported:
… Mr Rachmaninoff was recalled several times in the determined effort o
f the audience to make him play again, but he held up his hands with a gesture which meant that although he was willing, his fingers were not. So the audience laughed and let him retire …
The critics were not so easily carried away. The main reviews, in the Herald, the New York Sun and the New York Daily Tribune all complained about the work’s length.
They were nevertheless unanimous in declaring the Concerto to be a landmark in Rachmaninoff’s career. The Concerto’s length was a cause of concern to Rachmaninoff himself, but in this work he achieved in concerto form what he had created in symphony, symphonic poem and sonata: a great instrumental work on the largest scale. Longer than the Second Concerto, the degree of integration of thematic ideas and the more proliferating solo part mark this out as a concerto of rare quality. The first movement is a daring and highly successful formal innovation: after the two main themes — both given to the piano (for the first time in any of his concertos) — an immense two-pronged development section follows. The first is with orchestra, but the second is the cadenza, the longest and most difficult in these works. The structure of this movement is thus delicately poised, and a curious point is that, for the first half of the cadenza, Rachmaninoff wrote two versions, both quite different pianistic treatments of the material. What they share equally is tremendous drive and energy.
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