Building a Library
Terry Williams seeks out the best recordings of the composer’s final orchestral masterpiece, full of vibrant colour and driving rhythms
Terry Williams on the balletic beginnings and best recordings of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances
The work
‘Over six feet of scowl’ was how fellow émigré Igor Stravinsky described Sergei Rachmaninov, not without reason. During his lifetime, Rachmaninov had plenty to feel miserable about. However, his music tells a different story. While there is always an underlying and often undisguised melancholy in everything he wrote, there is never any trace of self-pity.
A career as a composer and acclaimed piano virtuoso launched in imperial Russia in the 1890s had had its fair share of upheaval over the years, not least an enforced emigration in the aftermath of his homeland’s 1917 revolution. During the last 15 years of his life he composed little – imprisoned in a world of celebrity which only seemed to want to hear him play his youthful Prelude in C sharp Minor, Rachmaninov the composer was in creative limbo, depressed and homesick. But miraculously, right at the end, inspiration came to the rescue.
After a gruelling 1939 US tour raising money for the war effort and already terminally ill, he sought refuge in his secluded studio in Beverly Hills, where he wrote what would be the first and last of his compositions on American soil – his other works from late in his life were composed while on breaks abroad. Originally conceived as a ballet entitled ‘Fantastic Dances’, the unexpected death of the composer’s would-be collaborator, the choreographer and dancer Michel Fokine, terminated that project. So instead, Rachmaninov dropped the titles for each tableau – ‘Noon’, ‘Twilight’ and ‘Midnight’, symbolising the three stages of a man’s life: childhood, maturity and decline – and ‘Fantastic’ became ‘Symphonic’. By the autumn of 1940 an innovative and spectacular orchestral showcase was ready for the concert hall. A two-piano version appeared at around the same time.
Rachmaninov was the last of the great Romantic composers, but something unmistakably new had appeared in his Symphonic Dances – it is interesting to speculate on what might have followed. The score is dedicated to and was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Eugene Ormandy, who had long championed his cause.
Ambiguously marked Non allegro, the first dance begins cautiously, first violins seemingly testing the water.
After a few bars, the cor anglais joins them, introducing the three-note motif which permeates the entire score. Then, Rachmaninov brings on the Cossacks: a series of emphatic
chords propels the music on
Something unmistakably new had appeared in Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances
its super-charged course. Later, in what is perhaps the most imaginative stroke of all, an alto saxophone sings a sad song which is taken over by the strings to a piano and harp accompaniment. The first mutterings of the ‘Dies irae’ from the Gregorian Mass for the Dead, a Rachmaninov obsession, are heard before explosive timpani take us back to the beginning. In what serves as a coda, Rachmaninov offers an interlude of serenity, quoting his own ill-fated First Symphony, with a string chorale decorated by the tinkling sounds of bells, harp, piano, flute and piccolo.
The second movement, subtitled
Tempo di valse and the only specific dance instruction given by Rachmaninov, is far removed from the cosy waltzes of Johann Strauss. This is a danse macabre. It starts with a jarring brass fanfare before spiralling woodwind and a shadowy violin solo invite us to a haunted ballroom. The waltz itself begins falteringly, gradually gaining momentum and confidence, with a slow central interlude providing uneasy respite. After a defiant outburst, the music dissolves into the ether.
The finale is dominated by references to the ‘Dies irae’ – the sighing Lento assai introduction is a disguised example of it. Rachmaninov the colourist comes to the fore, conjuring up a witches’ sabbath like no other – among the mayhem of the closing pages, the Russian Orthodox chant ‘Blessed be the Lord’, which Rachmaninov had set in his own All-night Vigil, confronts the ‘Dies irae’ in a battle to the death.
A percussive maelstrom rounds off a work that requires an orchestra of almost gargantuan proportions. In addition to a near full complement of strings, woodwind and brass, Rachmaninov calls on the services of alto saxophone, harp, piano, tambourine, side drum, bass drum, xylophone, cymbals, bells and tam-tam. He signed off this, his final masterpiece, with the words ‘I thank thee, Lord’ in the autumn of 1940, and the work was first performed the following January.
Turn the page to discover which recordings of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances we recommend