MasterWorks 05: Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 3

Piano Concerto No. 23 A Major, K. 488
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) 
Written: 1784–1786
Movements: Three
Style: Classical
Duration: 26 minutes

When Mozart finally escaped from the oppressive clutches of his father and the stifling atmosphere of Salzburg and settled in Vienna, he had one major problem. He didn’t have a job. So, Mozart set out to do what few, if any, composers in the eighteenth century could do: make a living as a freelance performer and composer. He filled his mornings teaching piano lessons to the children of the upper class and aristocracy. Later in the day he would play piano in the salons of high society. 

To make even more money he would present an “academy”—a benefit concert for himself—in one of the large halls in the city. Competition for such a space was fierce. The only time he could get into one of these halls was during Advent or Lent—when staged productions like operas were prohibited—so he could normally give only one or two a year. He made a lot of money at those concerts, but to make even more Mozart presented a series of concerts in smaller locations, like inns or ballrooms, and sold subscriptions for the whole group in advance—much like your season ticket subscriptions. He recounted his life in Vienna in a letter to his father:

"You must forgive me if I don’t write very much, but it is impossible to find time to do so, as I am giving three subscription concerts in Trattner’s room on the last three Wednesdays of Lent, beginning on March 17. I have a hundred subscribers already and shall easily get another thirty. The price for the three concerts is six florins. I shall probably give two concerts in the theater this year. Well, as you may imagine, I must play some new works—and therefore I must compose. The whole morning is taken up with pupils and almost every evening I have to play. . . . Well, haven’t I enough to do? I don’t think that in this way I can possibly get out of practice.”
Unlike today’s audiences, those in Mozart’s day didn’t want to hear yesterday’s music. He had to write new stuff to keep them coming back. In his first four years in Vienna, Mozart didn’t write any symphonies, but he did write seventeen piano concertos. The challenge was to make each different, and to include something for everybody.”

Mozart began writing his A Major Piano Concerto in 1784, but for some unknown reason put it aside and didn’t complete it until March 2, 1786 – at around the same time as his cheerful opera The Marriage of Figaro. Unlike many of his other piano concertos, there is no record of its first performance, but it was probably at one of the Lenten concerts in Vienna that year. Like The Marriage of Figaro, this concerto is a sunny and joyful piece that ventures occasionally into sad and somber territory with typical Mozartean panache. It vividly illustrates what Mozart was attempting when he wrote his piano concertos:

“They are a happy medium, between too hard and too easy—very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, natural, without lapsing into vapidity. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction, but they are written so that the non-connoisseurs cannot fail to be pleased even if they don’t know why.”
© 2024 John P. Varineau
 

Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 44
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Written: 1936–38
Movements: Three
Style: Romantic
Duration: 40 minutes

“Some people achieve a kind of immortality just by the totality with which they do or do not possess some quality or characteristic. Rachmaninoff’s immortalizing totality was his scowl. He was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall scowl.” That was Igor Stravinsky’s summation of his fellow Russian. He had a contradictory compliment as well: “He was the only pianist I have ever seen who did not grimace. This is a great deal.”

In spite of his demeanor, Sergei Rachmaninoff was a commanding presence in the music world as a virtuoso pianist, conductor, and composer. As the first half of the twentieth century grappled with modernism in all of its forms, Rachmaninoff remained an unrepentant romantic. “I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing, and I cannot acquire the new,” he said. “I have made intense efforts to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.” 

Rachmaninoff began his Third Symphony in the summer of 1935. It was not easy going. He wrote to his friend Vladimir Wilshaw: "My health has been wretched. I’m breaking up rapidly! When I had health – I possessed extraordinary laziness; as that begins to disappear—all I can think of is work. . . . Rebirth can’t be expected in old age! Thus, to increase the total of my activity is now difficult. This means that in my lifetime I have not done all I could have done, and this realization will not make my remaining days happy."

Another year of concertizing interrupted his work on the symphony. Still, he managed to complete it the following summer. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered it in November 1936. Critics were not encouraging: “No, the critics are not helpful. When my first symphony was played, they said that it was so-so. Then when my second was played they said the first was good, but that the second was so-so. Now that my third has been played – just this fall – they say my first and second are good but that my – oh, well, you see how it is.” Rachmaninoff was discouraged. He wrote to his secretary, “Since I began a record of those who love this work, I have turned down three fingers. Its second lover is the violinist Busch, and the third – excuse me – is I! When I run out of fingers on both hands, I’ll give up counting! Only – when will this be?” 
 
The symphony is in three movements. The first begins very quietly and then suddenly explodes as the orchestra plays an extended theme starting like an Orthodox chant and ending with flash and dash. It gives way to a second melody, first played by the cellos, full of ache and nostalgia. The rest of the movement explores and develops both themes. The second movement is actually two combined. The slower outer sections are pure, constant melody. The music expands and eventually weaves its way into a faster central section that starts as a scherzo and ends as a march. The melodic material for the last movement comes from the first movement, again with a contrast between a driving dance-like rhythm and soaring melody. Ever the pessimist, Rachmaninoff injects a snippet of the Dies Irae, a sung prayer from the Mass for the Dead (and something of a signature tune for him) into the proceedings. It turns out it has been hiding in the main theme all along.

©2023 John P. Varineau