Symphonic Dances

In his years of self-exile from Russia, Sergei Rachmaninoff fought a constant battle with the arbiters of taste, both in Europe and in America, who had decided that modern music had to be … modern. His roots were deeply planted in Russian soil and in the way of life he led there, and his music had evolved within the great (but relatively recent) Russian tradition, best represented by Tchaikovsky. His technique as a composer and orchestrator was unequaled, and his imagination was never dormant, but his style had little in common with the spirit of the Jazz Age or the various approaches to Neoclassicism or Modernism that were coming to life in the first decades of the 20th century.

Perhaps because his Fourth Piano Concerto had been poorly received in 1927, Rachmaninoff cast his next piano concerto as a Rhapsody (in name) and a set of variations on a theme by Paganini (in form). This worked, and the public responded enthusiastically. The same approach brought into being the Symphonic Dances — the Third Symphony had similarly been roughly handled by the press in 1936. Rather than a Fourth Symphony, the new work — which turned out to be Rachmaninoff’s last major composition — was originally titled Fantastic Dances and then, acknowledging its true identity, Symphonic Dances.

This masterly swansong was composed in quiet seclusion in the summer of 1940 when Rachmaninoff was living in Centerport, New York, in a house overlooking Long Island Sound Ballet was in his mind, in any case, because the great Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokine was planning a ballet using the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a project which had Rachmaninoff’s enthusiastic support. This was premiered in 1939 without much acclaim, and a follow-up Fokine ballet on the Symphonic Dances never materialized (owing to Fokine’s death in 1942, followed by Rachmaninoff’s death a year later).

Perhaps Rachmaninoff did feel this music as dance music, with the powerful stamping rhythm of the first movement echoing ballets by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, and with the fleet waltz rhythm of the second movement suggesting Ravel. The finale is more intricate and elusive, rhythmically, for behind the restless flow of sounds, the composer was thinking of plainchant, specifically the Dies irae from the Latin Requiem Mass, a motive Rachmaninoff cited frequently. There is also reference to the Russian chant “Blagosloven yesi, Gospod,” which he had set for chorus in his All-Night Vigil of 1915. These two references emerge as intrinsic to his melodic style, deeply rooted, probably subconsciously, in the chanting of Orthodox priests he had heard in his childhood. It is also significant that a theme from his First Symphony is quoted at the end of the first movement of the Symphonic Dances, played in a quiet and dignified manner and standing apart from the strong pulse of the rest of the movement.

The first movement is a superb example of how to build a large musical structure from simple materials, in this case a descending triad, weaving under and over firm rhythmic support and planted (with endless chromatic digressions) in the key of C minor. A dialogue between oboe and clarinet puts the brakes on for the second section, which is slower, cast in a remote key, and richly melodic. Here, an alto saxophone introduces one of Rachmaninoff’s rapturous melodies that grow and reshape themselves in a passionate evolution, often hinting at a Russian flavor.

The middle movement is a masterpiece of elegance in a waltz rhythm full of shifts and turns, its main tune being a plaintive melody first presented by English horn and oboe in partnership. The orchestration is dazzling, and a muted brass fanfare punctuates the movement from time to time.

The third-movement finale combines melancholy wistfulness with rhythmic exhilaration and virtuosity. The movement is a quest for its theme, which makes the initial Allegro sound restless and fragmentary, with contributions from the piccolo and trumpet that help to form a melodic core. But this is not to be reached until after a lengthy return to the slower tempo, when the cellos press the claim of something close to the Dies irae. The Allegro returns for an exuberant mixture of plainchants for the full orchestra. With so much of the finale devoted to gloomy Russian introspection, not remotely suggestive of dance, the whole work comes nearer to being the Fourth Symphony Rachmaninoff never wrote, with slow movement and finale being persuasively combined.

— 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.