Rachmaninov: Symphonies Nos 1-3, Symphonic Dances
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Valery Gergiev Symphonies Nos 1–3 Symphonic Dances Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) Symphony No 1 in D minor, Op 13 (1895) Symphony No 2 in E minor, Op 27 (1906–07) Symphony No 3 in A minor, Op 44 (1935–36) Symphonic Dances, Op 45 (1940) Mily Balakirev (1837–1910) Tamara (1867-82) Russia (Second overture on three Russian themes) (1864, rev 1907) Valery Gergiev conductor London Symphony Orchestra Works previously released on: LSO0677 Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 LSO0688 Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances & Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements LSO0779 Rachmaninov Symphony No 3 & Balakirev Russia LSO0784 Rachmaninov Symphony No 1 & Balakirev Tamara © 2018 London Symphony Orchestra Ltd, London, UK P 2018 London Symphony Orchestra Ltd, London, UK 2 Volume 1 Rachmaninov Symphony No 1 in D minor, Op 13 (1895) 1 I. Grave - Allegro non troppo 13’35’’ 2 II. Allegro animato 7’03’’ 3 III. Larghetto 9’24’’ 4 IV. Allegro con fuoco 11’40’’ Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 in E minor, Op 27 (1906–07) 5 I. Largo - Allegro moderto 22’31’’ 6 II. Allegro molto 9’50’’ 7 III. Adagio 14’21’’ 8 IV. Allegro vivace 14’10’’ Total 102’34’’ Recorded live on 19 February 2015 in DSD 128fs (Symphony No 1), and on 20–21 September 2008 in DSD 64fs (Symphony No 2) at the Barbican, London. James Mallinson producer Classic Sound Ltd recording, editing and mastering facilities Jonathan Stokes for Classic Sound Ltd balance engineer, audio editor, mixing and mastering engineer Neil Hutchinson for Classic Sound Ltd balance engineer, audio editor, mixing and mastering engineer Ian Watson and Jenni Whiteside for Classic Sound Ltd audio editors (Symphony No 2) 3 Volume 2 Rachmaninov Symphony No 3 in A minor, Op 44 (1935–36) 1 I. Lento - Allegro moderato - Allegro 17’45’’ 2 II. Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro vivace 11’53’’ 3 III. Allegro - Allegro vivace - Allegro (Tempo primo) - Allegretto - Allegro vivace 13’49’’ Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances, Op 45 (1940) 4 I. Non allegro 12’54’’ 5 II. Andante con moto (Tempo di valse) 9’35’’ 6 III. Lento assai - Allegro vivace - Lento assai. Come prima - Allegro vivace 13’46’’ 7 Balakirev Tamara 19’38’’ 8 Balakirev Russia 13’05’’ Total 112’25’’ Recorded live, on 11 & 13 November 2014 in DSD 128fs (Symphony No 3 & Russia), on 7–8 May 2009 in DSD 64fs (Symphonic Dances), and on 19 February 2015 in DSD 128fs (Tamara) at the Barbican, London. James Mallinson producer Classic Sound Ltd recording, editing and mastering facilities Jonathan Stokes for Classic Sound Ltd balance engineer, audio editor, mixing and mastering engineer Neil Hutchinson for Classic Sound Ltd recording engineer, audio editor, mixing and mastering engineer 4 were two other first performances also on the Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) programme) and the performance on 27 March Symphony No 1 in D minor, Op 13 (1895) 1897 is one of music’s most notorious disasters. Rachmaninov cowered outside the hall, barely Rachmaninov’s star shone brightly at the beginning able to recognise his own music. As always happens of his career. He was barely twenty when his one- when a new work fails, the composer gets all the act opera Aleko, composed as a graduation exercise blame, rather than the conductor (who, other from the Moscow Conservatory, was praised by failings aside, may have been drunk). Most reviews Tchaikovsky and performed at the Bolshoi. He had were scathing. Rachmaninov’s self confidence also already composed his First Piano Concerto. was shattered and he was unable to compose any Following two smaller-scale orchestral pieces, important new work until the Second Piano Concerto The Rock and the Fantasy on Gypsy Themes, he in 1901 (though he was very active in other fields felt ready to tackle the most demanding orchestral during this period, when he laid the foundations form. He devoted most of 1895 to composing his for his career as a pianist and conductor). enormously ambitious First Symphony, a work that would surpass everything he had yet achieved. At various times Rachmaninov thought of revising ‘I believed I had opened up entirely new paths’, the symphony, but when he emigrated in 1918 the he recalled many years later. score was left behind in Russia and subsequently disappeared. It was only in 1944 that the original The work was accepted for performance by Belyayev, orchestral parts were rediscovered, allowing the founder and patron of the Russian Symphony symphony to be reconstructed and performed in Concerts in St Petersburg, a series devoted to the Moscow on 17 October 1945. Two things became promotion of new Russian music under the joint clear when the symphony was brought back to life: direction of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. Perhaps that this was the boldest and most interesting Rachmaninov would have done better to get his Russian symphony in the decade after Tchaikovsky’s symphony performed in Moscow, where he was Pathétique, and that its hostile reception changed better known, but he was no doubt pleased at the the course of Rachmaninov’s composition, for he thought of a prestigious first performance in St never again allowed himself the expression of such Petersburg, where Glazunov had already conducted raw passion and such blatantly tragic gestures. a performance of The Rock. The symphony, however, was another matter: both Rimsky-Korsakov and Like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov creates drama Glazunov expressed doubts about it, and although by contrasting thematic groups of very different Glazunov was a fine composer and all-round character, but the unity of the symphony is ensured musician, he was not an inspiring conductor, and by a cyclic form and thematic cross-references certainly not the man to bring out the best in music that are always clearly audible. Each movement which he didn’t particularly like. The symphony’s begins with the same four-note figure. In the first rehearsals were completely inadequate (there movement it is followed immediately by an ominous 5 descending figure in the lower strings. This is the friend about a rumour in the Russian press: ‘It’s symphony’s recurrent motto theme, which in true, I have composed a symphony. It’s only ready various transformations is heard in many of the in rough. I finished it a month ago, and immediately subsequent themes. put it aside. It was a severe worry to me, and I am not going to think about it any more. But I am Throughout the symphony there is a striking mystified how the newspapers got onto it’. He was contrast between themes of an almost liturgical bound to be wary of announcing a new symphony, character and themes with the inflections of gypsy for the only performance of his First, in 1897, had music. This polarity has been interpreted as the been a disaster. reflection of a personal drama in Rachmaninov’s life. The score has a dedication ‘To A.L.’ and the Rachmaninov conducted the first performances grim inscription from St Paul, ‘Vengeance is mine, of the Second Symphony in St Petersburg on 26 I shall repay’. This is also the epigraph to Tolstoy’s January 1908 and in Moscow a week later. He went Anna Karenina, the story of a passionate woman on to conduct it several times in both Europe and driven to destruction. ‘A.L.’ is almost certainly Anna the USA over the next six years, but never conducted Lodïzhenskaya, the part-gypsy wife of a friend; but it after leaving Russia in 1918, and unfortunately nothing certain is known about Rachmaninov’s never had the chance to record it. relations with her, and their story is still shrouded in mystery. What we do know is that in his last All sympathetic listeners agree that the Second work, the Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninov recalled Symphony contains the very best of Rachmaninov. the motto theme of his First Symphony in a golden Deliberately paced and rhythmically flexible, it shimmer of sound: whatever experience lay behind is, above all, propelled by the wonderfully fertile the symphony, it was still very much present in melody of which he was such a master. The Rachmaninov’s mind at the end of his life. orchestral sound is full and rich, but unlike such contemporaries as Strauss and Mahler, Rachmaninov is relatively modest in his orchestral demands. Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) He is also rather un-Russian in his approach to orchestration. Instead of the unmixed colours Symphony No 2 in E minor, Op 27 favoured by so many of his countrymen from Glinka (1906–07) to Shostakovich, Rachmaninov deals in varied shades and combinations, producing a full, sonorous Following the performances in January 1906 of orchestral blend, with horns and low woodwind his two one-act operas The Miserly Knight and (particularly the melancholy cor anglais and bass Francesca da Rimini, Rachmaninov next turned clarinet) supporting the middle of the texture, and to composing an opera on Maeterlinck’s Monna the tuba doubling the long-held bass notes that Vanna, but this ran into difficulties and remains frequently underpin the music. a fragment. Then in February 1907 he wrote to a 6 The slow introduction begins with an entire group scampering contrapuntal ideas in the central section, of motto themes heard one after the other: the but towards the end of the movement it declares initial unison phrase on cellos and basses, ominous its own derivation from the sinister wind chords brass and wind chords, and the phrase passed in the symphony’s first bars. The music dies away from first to second violins. This introduction, as in an ominous murmur. well as being a rich mine of thematic material, also announces the scale of what follows.