 | How is Rachmaninoff not listed here yet? And not just because Rand mentioned his 2nd piano concerto in The Fountainhead. I loved, *loved* Rachmaninoff long before I'd even heard of Ayn Rand. I guess I assumed he would be a shoo-in with the Tchaikovsky crowd.
In any case, this is a 3 CD set containing his four piano concertos, the impossibly brilliant (and uncharacteristically lighthearted) Rhapsody, and the well-loved Tchaikovsky piano concerto no.1. The composter, conductor, soloist and orchestra are all Russian. I don't know if that makes this a "better" recording than others (Horowitz, Rubenstein, and Rachmaninoff himself come to mind), but these recordings are my worn-to-death favorites, if only because they are the ones I own.
Admittedly, the 1st and 4th concertos are not well known amd are hugely overshadowed by the 2nd, 3rd and Rhapsody. They're conveniently placed on the same CD and are probably best listened to as historical or biographical bookends.
The 2nd piano concerto is paired with the Tchaikovsky concerto on one disc, which has much heuristic value, as magnificent as both are. Tchaikovsky sounds, well, wonderfully Tchaikovskyish, with strong clarinet overtones and synchronized instrumentation for melodic emphasis, which remind one of his ballet scores. His opening lines were also mentioned by Rand in The Fountainhead. Overall, it is a spectacular piece, as I'm sure others have said here already, so I will not elaborate more. I will lightly criticize the last three notes - so unoriginial! The 3rd movement is exhilerating, and he ends the upward sweep with three predictable notes. But it's just a little tarnish.
Immediately compare that with Rach's 2nd. Through and through, in all his works, he is original, his own. You can hear influences from Beethoven, Chopin and Tchaikovsky in his 2nd concerto, but his complexity combined with superb musciality, lyricism and controlled but pure emotion make him a master of the instrument, the format, the genre. I have read elsewhere that Rachmaninoff knew the piano better than nearly any other composer - certainly better than Chopin and Tchaikovsky - and I think the piano soars more under his pen than that of anyone else. Rach's 2nd is a very romantic piece, combining the heroic elements Rand surely noticed, with wistful longing and introspection, determination and heady, exuberant drives towards a highly satisfying climax.
My favorite however, by far, is the Rach 3, and certainly not because of the movie Shine, although that movie aptly pointed out the Mt. Everest-like scale - technically and emotionally - of the piece. To give you an idea of the technical difficulty involved: some say the Rach 3 is the most technically demanding piano music there is. Ever. A student asked Artur Rubenstein when he started learning the Rach 3. At eighteen, he said, though he was still learning it some 30+ years later. And, on a personal note, a former piano teacher of mine played Rach's 2nd as an undergraduate to rave reviews; he told me a few years later that he hoped to *attempt* the Rach 3 sometime in his lifetime. That is the magnitude of technical difference between the two.
As for the music itself, what can I say? It touches an essential cord within me. Here, Rachmaninoff *knows* me, and makes my soul's essence audible - the somber, brooding struggle with personal doubts and demons (Rand would be appalled by Rachmaninoff's lack of self-esteem! His letters are a stark contrast to his music), the spark and burn of motivation, inspiration, the joy of epiphany, and the ebb of energy and recollection of brooding. And that's just the first movement :o). The 2nd movement is characteristically slower, reflective, lyrical, featuring the flute, but Rachmaninoff's genius and passion shine through as he (somehow) smoothly interrupts this to bring back a spur of energy, which is slowly, then quickly, flung into joyous, striding - no, galloping - confidence, conquering the doubts of the first movement. There are a couple recursions that I feel ambivalent about; on the one hand, they seem to interrupt the straight-line course of conquest that I love; on the other hand, they serve to underscore how vitally important and beautiful that clarity of purpose is, and make me all the more appreciative when it returns. The concerto ends like a fist slammed on a table and someone saying, "Yes! We will do it!" How to top that? I can't conceive of it.
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was written a couple decades later, around 1936. There are a few influences from more contemporary music, but Rachmaninoff was a romantic through and through. The structure of the piece is entirely different - perhaps I'm not used to the rhapsody format - with 26 fully connected variations. Again, there is the technical originality, musicality, lyricism, and a wide emotional spectrum, all of which are well-integrated, to be expected from Rachmaninoff's unsparing critical judgement and insistence on perfection. The tone is completely different from his other works, however, especially towards the end. One wonders if he was thinking of the antics of his grandchildren, or had found some internal fountain of youth, because I find the tone not a triumph *over* something, just triumph, joy, and a wink of humor for their own sake, like a child shouting and dancing that he loves being alive.
For those wondering if this is a living Concerto of Deliverance, and why Rand didn't name this or the 3rd as such, I'm on the fence. In my listening of the pieces, struggle is not entirely thrown off in Rach's 3rd the way I imagine in my version of Halley's 5th, and the absence of struggle in the Rhapsody precludes it from being delivered from something. Nevertheless, I find in Rachmaninoff's music the affirmation, refueling, motivation and exhileration that I imagine in Halley's music. And in classical, instrumental music exhisting today, Rachmaninoff's as close as it gets, and it's pretty darn good!
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