All right, here it is: one of my favourite symphonies, composed by someone whose music I often cannot stand. Although I do like Isle of the Dead, the Symphonic Dances and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, I find most of Rachmaninovs music florid, overheated and overstuffed with the worst excesses of late Romanticism, and I would never have considered him an important symphonist... until I heard his long-lost and long-forgotten First, a work that he had destroyed after its disastrous premiere -- an act of self-destructive grief that I regret profoundly, because the First is a lean, mean and angry piece remarkably different from any of the music he would later write. Although a product of the 1890s and one that breaks no new ground in terms of technique, it sounds to my ears like a work of the 20th Century... perhaps because of its economy of development, perhaps because of its no-nonsense movement from beginning to shattering end, but mostly perhaps because of its bristling energy. It also builds and builds and builds to one of the few genuinely frightening and cataclysmic finales in 19th Century music; the first time I heard it, my jaw hit the floor, and all I could think was, THIS is Rachmaninov?!? Yes, it is. And heres my favourite recording of this music, with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Concertgebouw on London/Decca. youtu.be/1q0t683xaWI
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 04:47:27 +0000
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