Piano Concerto No. 1

Sergei Rachmaninoff proved himself a composer at an early age, even before he had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. This is somewhat surprising, given that his childhood was extremely unsettled — moving from place to place as his father slipped further into debt.

Rachmaninoff's musical training began at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and his career might have been quite different if he had remained there to study with Rimsky-Korsakov and fraternize with the likes of Glazunov and Stravinsky. Instead, after some poor exam results, he was transferred to Moscow, where he studied with the disciplinarian Nikolai Zverev, met a group of talented fellow-students including Scriabin and Medtner, and above all came under the influence of Tchaikovsky.

Rachmaninoff graduated from the Conservatory’s piano class at age 19 and from the composition class a year later, by which time he had already started a symphony, completed his First Piano Concerto, and composed the Trio élégiaque No. 1, a tone poem called Prince Rostislav, and an opera, Aleko.

For five years, until the famously disastrous performance of his First Symphony in 1897, fine music continued to flow from Rachmaninoff’s pen, especially piano music and songs. Later in life, he was better known as a conductor and pianist, but it was on composition that his ambitions were focused as he approached his 20th year.

After abandoning an earlier piano concerto (in C minor), Rachmaninoff tried again in 1890 and completed the first movement. The rest was rapidly written in July 1891. He later wrote:

I could have finished it much earlier, but after the first movement I was idle for a long time and only began to write out the other movements on July 3rd. I wrote down and orchestrated the last two movements in two-and-a-half days. You can imagine what a job that was! I wrote from 5 in the morning until 8 o’clock at night.

Vasily Safonov, head of the Moscow Conservatory, agreed to conduct the first performance the following year.

It is hard to imagine that such rich, complex piano writing could fail to impress, but one early reviewer wrote: “In the first movement there was not yet any individuality, but there was taste, tension, youthful sincerity, and obvious skill; already there is much promise.”

Rachmaninoff himself was not entirely satisfied, and before long he was hinting that he would like to revise the concerto. He did not do so, however, for another quarter century, until the world-shaking days of 1917 when the Tsar’s abdication in the spring caused the composer to celebrate being at last in a “free country.” Still, as the threat of further revolution came closer, Rachmaninoff felt less comfortable and made plans to go abroad. Working still in Moscow, he wrote out a new version of the concerto, completing it just two weeks after the October Revolution broke out in Petrograd. At a fortunate moment, Rachmaninoff received an invitation to give some concerts in Stockholm, and he was able to get the necessary visas. Just before Christmas, he and his family left Russia, never to return.

Hallmarks of Rachmaninoff’s mature style appear in both the original version and the 1917 revision of the concerto — the rich harmonic progressions, the wealth of melody woven into cascading torrents of notes in the solo part, the subtle orchestration. The music is restless, never retaining a single tempo for long, often interrupted by magnificent decorative swirls in the piano, and unfailingly rich in texture. The melodies have his stamp of authorship, but they do not extend into the long snakelike themes of his later music; here they are still always built a few measures at a time.

The tempo markings, by which we conventionally list the concerto’s three movements, tell only part of the story of this music. The Vivace first movement’s main theme, for instance, is first heard at a surprisingly moderate pace. And, yes, the slow movement (marked Andante) starts at a slow speed, but its end is so full of filigree notes that it feels almost like a scherzo, echoing the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. And the fast finale includes a section marked “Andante ma non troppo,” lovingly decorated by the soloist before returning to the up-tempo music.

Perhaps the strongest impression this concerto leaves is of Rachmaninoff the improviser. He feels his way towards his themes before stating them, and then immediately adds decorations and variations that pull the tempo and the texture in different directions, almost as if he was playing the piece for the first time. Indeed, perhaps this is a clue towards explaining the concerto’s eternal freshness.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.