The couple were married in Dresden on September 23rd. The following day Rachmaninoff left for England where, starting on October 2nd, he had a three-week tour. The newly-weds spent the winter in Munich. During Rachmaninoff’s British stay, the first English broadcast of his second Trio took place on October 12th, in Birmingham, by Nigel Dallaway, Frank Cantell and Arthur Kennedy — six weeks earlier Beatrice Eveline and Maurice Cole had broadcast the Cello Sonata for the first time.
Rachmaninoff returned to the United States in time for the first season’s concert on November 14th in Boston. Although the concert season and recordings earned him a sizeable income, Rachmaninoff was uneasy that he had not composed anything important for years. While in Russia he began to note ideas for a Fourth Concerto, but the opportunity had not arisen for it to be completed. He needed a change of Concerto in his programmes but the Whiteman concert, among others, demonstrated that politics was not the only subject to have changed. He was now fifty-one, with his elder daughter married (and already expecting his first grand-child), and a younger generation of composers was springing up: Bartók, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, ‘Les Six’, all wrote in a new musical language.
Rachmaninoff rested from concert appearances for a while after December 1925, but first he completed the current season, during which he gave a second White House recital on January 16th. At the end of the season Rachmaninoff returned to the Victor studios recording another large Chopin work, the Ballade in A Flat Opus 47, but this also remained unreleased until 1973. Another work recorded at these sessions which was released was Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor — or, rather, twenty-six of them, for nos 15-18 and 20-21 were omitted. These omissions were not dictated by the playing time of the 78r pm sides, even though the recording was issued on only two sides. Rachmaninoff’s tempi for the Variations are remarkably swift, but he was not above editing other composer’s music: pianists of his generation did similar things which would not be readily tolerated today. These were Rachmaninoff’s first electrical recordings, and their improved sound quality is startling. Later in April the Victor company made the first electrical recording of a symphony orchestra: on April 29, Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre was recorded by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, inaugurating a new gramophone era. With the new recordings safely in the can Rachmaninoff left for Europe, travelling to Holland and then, for a complete rest, to Dresden, where he recuperated fully for five weeks before he was able to travel with his younger daughter Tatiana to Paris, where they met up with Natalia, Irina and Prince Volkonsky. They rented a chateau in the Seine et Oise Départment, south-west of Paris. No sooner was the family reunited than tragedy struck: Prince Volkonsky died very suddenly, just before the birth of his child. The baby was a girl, named Sophie, Rachmaninoff’s first grandchild.
The sudden death of his son-in-law naturally caused Rachmaninoff to reorganise his life. Since Koussevitsky accepted the conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 1924 season, the ‘Koussevitsky Edition’ in Paris had lost its driving force. Rachmaninoff thought he could take up where Koussevitsky left off, and he founded a publishing house principally to publish works by émigré Russian composers. It was called ‘Tair’, after the first two letters of the christian names of his daughters, Tatiana and Irina, who ran the company. They published many works, including piano arrangements by Rachmaninoff which he later recorded for Victor and Ampico.
His decision (made before his son-in-law’s death) to reduce the number of United States appearances each season to a maximum of twenty-five, made him dispose of his home on Riverside Drive. As a base for the six-week autumn tour of 1925, Rachmaninoff rented an apartment at 505 West End Avenue, on the Lower East Side. He attended Toscanini’s much-delayed debût with the New York Philharmonic on January 14th 1926, a concert which included Resphigi’s Pines of Rome in the presence of Resphigi, who conducted the work himself the following day in Philadelphia. Toscanini left for La Scala to prepare for the première of Puccini’s last opera Turandot, which he conducted on April 25th. Stokowski prepared for an important American première, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, with the Philadelphia Orchestra on April 3rd. Sibelius himself was composing his last masterpiece Tapiola, commissioned by Damrosch and the New York Symphony; its world première scheduled for December 26th, 1926.
While in New York Rachmaninoff began work on the long-postponed Fourth Concerto. He recorded more sides for Victor around Christmas, including his new transcriptions of Kreisler’s Liebesfreud and Schubert’s Wohin? which he premièred in Stamford, Connecticut on October 29th. Rachmaninoff persuaded Victor to allow him to make one of his most delightful recordings. He had met the Russian gypsy singer Nadezhda Pievitskaya some time before and had arranged a Russian folk-song, “Powder and Paint”, for voice and piano. They recorded this arrangement together with some characterful additions to the vocal line by the singer, on February 22nd, and, although it was not published until 1973, the disc remained in Rachmaninoff’s possession. It is a wonderful piece of gramophone history: few people could name the idiomatic and sly accompanist. The song exerts a hypnotic fascination in this delicious and deeply-moving performance. Hearing Rachmaninoff accompany this Russian folk-song, recorded thousands of miles from his homeland and performed with such aplomb, obvious affection and feeling, one readily understands the humanity and patriotism of this great artist. It is a side of Rachmaninoff’s personality that was never again captured on record and one can only regret the missed recording opportunities of Rachmaninoff accompanying Chaliapin, for example, in the folksongs they performed at parties until the small hours.
After leaving New York on April 20th, Sergei and Natalia travelled to Paris where they were reunited with their family before they all travelled to Dresden, where he completed the Fourth Concerto. While writing the work he also completed a little-known work Three Russian Folk-Songs, for chorus and orchestra. The third is the “Powder and Paint” song he recorded the previous February: the haunting fascination of Madame Plevitskaya’s voice inspired him and his months away from concert-giving enabled him to compose once more.
With Nikolai Medtner in the 1930s.
He sent the Fourth Concerto for copying and when the score was returned he realised the length of the piece. He wrote wittily to Medtner, to whom he dedicated the work, that it was so long it would have to be spread over three nights. Although Rachmaninoff had made changes to works in the past, after actual performances, it was the first time he cut a composition before it had been heard. It was doubtless this initial difficulty (also brought on by his years away from the composer’s desk) in deciding the form in which his ideas should be expressed which accounts for the fractured nature of the Fourth Concerto, but it is a finer work than many people realise.
After his work on the scores Rachmaninoff holidayed in Cannes, returning to New York in November 1926: Leopold Stokowski (to whom he dedicated the Three Russian Folk-Songs Opus 41) and the Philadelphia Orchestra scheduled the premières of both works for March 18th 1927, but Rachmaninoff’s own concert season commenced before that, in February.
The Fourth Concerto, despite gorgeous moments, seemed to many little more than an unsuccessful rehash of earlier works. Such a view is current fifty years later: it is a superficial one. Analysis of the slow movement of the Third Concerto reveals startling modernity (the first piano entry could be by Schoenberg), which reached a climax in the Opus 39 pieces, but the finale of the Fourth Concerto is utterly new. Few people appreciated the commanding newness of thought which entered Rachmaninoff’s music here. The immense virtuosity of the finale is not dazzling passage-work to leave audiences gasping. It is hectic, action-packed music, unstoppable in its energy and power, unrivalled in its total use of the modern concert-grand piano, and orchestrated with a complete and profound mastery. In view of his later development, it is a pivotal work in Rachmaninoff’s output. That one can speak of later development shows Rachmaninoff was certainly not finished at fifty
-three. If the Fourth Concerto looks forward, the Three Russian Folk-Songs look back, towards a Russia dear to the composer. The work is brief, a mere fifteen minutes, and uses a strange chorus: no sopranos or tenors, only contraltos and basses, frequently in unison or octaves, singing simple songs with little decoration, accompanied by an orchestra commenting in a manner reminiscent of The Bells. The Russian Folk-Songs are as different from the Night Vigil as two choral works by a composer could possibly be, but the difference demonstrates the range of this composer, from the complex glittering polyphony of the liturgical work to the typically Russian Primitivism of the later piece.
In spite of difficulty with Stokowski over the tempo for the “Powder and Paint” song, which Rachmaninoff wanted taken at a true Allegro moderato, it was this work which made the greater impression at the concert.
Rachmaninoff was disappointed by the lack of success of the new Concerto, for it meant a great deal to him. It was his first work for almost ten years; he had taken nine months off to compose it, and he revised it substantially before performance, but the critics judged it a failure. It was a tragedy the work was not better received for Rachmaninoff withdrew it for further revision, only to lapse into another period without composing which lasted five years.
On April 5th, Rachmaninoff was again in the recording studio for the usual sessions following the end of the season: he recorded eight sides but the music, apart from a few pieces by Chopin (including the second recording of the A Flat Waltz Opus 64 No 3 — which he first recorded for Edison in 1919) and two beautiful studies by Mendelssohn, is not worthy of much comment. It is clear from this repertoire that Victor were more interested in Rachmaninoff recording encores (for which there was a ready market) than in more substantial music, but this was soon to change. Rachmaninoff returned to his family in Europe at the end of a comparatively disappointing season, anxious to correct the ‘faults’ in the Fourth Concerto which he cut extensively, particularly the finale. The revisions occupied most of his free time during the summer. He enlisted the help of Julius Conus,1 a composer and violinist (a brother of his old Conservatory colleague and fellow Aleko finalist, Lev Conus), whose violin Concerto in E minor was taken up by Heifetz. Julius Conus prepared a new set of parts from his corrected score, which was published by Tair in Paris in 1928.
If Victor were still only interested in recording Rachmaninoff in short pieces, the European companies were recording more significant music. The Beethoven centenary was celebrated in style by the English Columbia Company, who recorded several Beethoven symphonies under Felix Weingartner with the old Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The ‘Choral’ was recorded in March, with Harold Williams as the bass soloist, and between June and October, Williams appeared in Sir Thomas Beecham’s first recording of Handel’s “Messiah”. It was Beecham’s Handel performances which helped secure his United States debût.
This happened on January 12th 1928, when he appeared with the New York Philharmonic. A sensational evening, it also saw the United States debût of the 23-year-old Vladimir Horowitz. His parents had taken Scriabin’s advice when he heard the ten-year-old boy in Kiev, for Horowitz had already exhibited that grasp of cultural and artistic matters which Scriabin regarded as vital. He made his debût in Kiev in 1921, followed by a four-year series of Russian tours. In 1923 he played twenty-one concerts in Leningrad (the new Soviet name for Petrograd) in one season, becoming a noted chamber-music player. However, in 1925 he left Russia. His recitals and first recordings — which included music by Rachmaninoff — in Germany, Italy and France created an enormous impression. Rachmaninoff heard about Horowitz from Fritz Kreisler, who saw him in Berlin and, as Horowitz’s United States debût coincided with the start of his own season, he attended along with Josef Hofmann, Josef and Rosa Lhévinne and Benno Moiseiwitsch, the debût of Beecham and Horowitz. Beecham included four works by Handel and a Mozart symphony as well as music by Berlioz, while Horowitz played the Tchaikovsky First Concerto. Rachmaninoff met Horowitz the day before (January 11th) and wished him well, but the sensation which the concert caused leant an added urgency to Horowitz’s second appearance. This was a concerto engagement under Damrosch with the other New York Orchestra, the New York Symphony, with whom he was engaged to play Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto on February 23rd. Damrosch had conducted the première with Rachmaninoff in 1909 and Rachmaninoff arranged to meet Horowitz at the Steinway Salon, to play through his Concerto. Once news got out that Horowitz and Rachmaninoff were to rehearse with Horowitz playing the solo part on one piano and Rachmaninoff the orchestral part on another, a crowd gathered outside Steinways, blocking the traffic. Horowitz recalls that Rachmaninoff said very little, merely making a few suggestions, but Abram Chasins said that Rachmaninoff “told me that he was completely astounded, that he listened open-mouthed as Horowitz pounced upon the fiendish piece with the fury and voraciousness of a tiger. ‘He swallowed it whole’, said Rachmaninoff.”
Vladimir Horowitz.
The Horowitz debût impressed Rachmaninoff enormously, and the performance of his Third Concerto was especially memorable. Rachmaninoff had devised a new linked programme to complement those he had given in earlier years: a programme of ‘Fantasy-Sonatas’, including Beethoven’s Moonlight and Litzt’s Dante. In April he was again recording for Victor, or rather re-recording in the new electrical process, proving his continued popular success as an artist in spite of his comparative failure as a composer the previous season. The new recordings included his third, and definitive, version of the C-sharp minor Prelude. Eldridge Johnson’s Victor Company was just one of many successful companies that blossomed in America during the 1920s and, after thirty years, Johnson decided to take his profit and leave. In 1927 he sold the Victor Company to a consortium of merchant bankers for £6 million, or around 20 million dollars. The bankers in turn began negotiations with the vast Radio Corporation of America, to whom they sold the Victor Company for a substantial profit in 1929. The Radio Corporation of America, or RCA as it came to be known, realised that in Rachmaninoff they had a big selling artist, and planned a series of more important recordings with him. In addition, the ties formed at the turn of the century with ‘His Master’s Voice’ in Europe meant that the Victor Company’s artists’ recordings were as well-known in that continent as in the United States, and the connection meant many artists were able to record for both companies in both continents.
Rachmaninoff had long wanted to work with Fritz Kreisler, and they recorded the Beethoven Violin Sonata in G major Opus 30 No 3 on March 22nd 1928. Together with Rachmaninoff’s recording of the Beethoven Variations, these performances make one wish Victor or RCA had recorded more of Rachmaninoff in Beethoven. The sessions with Kreisler (Rachmaninoff’s first chamber music recording) had gone so well they decided to record more sonatas, this time in Europe. A year or so before Kreisler had recorded, for the first time, the Beethoven Violin Concerto under Leo Blech in Berlin, and in this city Kreisler and Rachmaninoff (staying nearby in Dresden) recorded Greig’s Third Violin Sonata on September 14/15th and, for the Schubert Centenary, the Schubert Grand Duo in A major on December 20/21st. These were regrettably the only collaborations between Rachmaninoff and Kreisler on record, but at the time they constituted a substantial recording project. The performances are suffused with a rapport that only comes from an intuitive partnership.
Curiously enough, early in 1928 Rachmaninoff completed for Ampico a substantial recording project which had been built up over several years, and which he never repeated for disc. This was the complete set of the Morceaux de Fantasie, Opus 3, which heard in sequence for the first time on the Decca 1978 re-recording is a remarkably impressive achievement, with few allowances having to be made for the slight variation in roll quality.
During his European stay while holidaying on the Northern French coast, Rachmaninoff took the opportunity of playing the revised version of the Fourth Concerto to Medtner, who was living close by, as were other friends. Together they formed another congenia
l colony of Russian expatriates, and in the autumn Rachmaninoff began his European tour with concerts in Copenhagen in October, followed by appearances in Scandinavia, Holland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary and France. The tour was immensely successful, and Rachmaninoff determined that future seasons would be similarly planned. The new year saw him in America for thirty-one concerts in the spring, at the end of which, in ten days, from April 10th-20th, he undertook a staggering recording project for the company which had now become RCA Victor: Schumann’s Carneval Opus 9 complete; Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee and Scriabin’s Prelude in F sharp minor Opus 11 No 8; a new recording with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra of his Second Concerto, and finally his first appearance as conductor on record (and the first recording the Philadelphia Orchestra made with anyone other than Stokowski) — his symphonic poem The Isle of The Dead, and the orchestral version of the Vocalise.
This is an enormous amount of music to be recorded by one artist in a triple rôle within a few days, and a practical demonstration of the company’s faith in Rachmaninoff as an artist. The future looked bright indeed.
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