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Chandos
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Sergey
Vasil’yevich Rachmaninov In November 1906 the thirty-three-year-old Rachmaninov moved his family to Dresden, intending to distance himself from the pressure of the daily grind, and from political unrest at home, and so devote all his time to composition. |
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It was there that he completed the Second Symphony in January 1908. The first performance came almost immediately, on 26 January 1908 in St Petersburg, and another came soon after in Moscow, and the symphony won the Glinka prize of 1,000 roubles, beating Scriabin's very avant-garde Poem of Ecstacy into second place. Inscribed to his teacher Taneyev, the score of the Second Symphony was immediately published. Rachmaninov then took it on a tour of America where it was first played by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and later, in 1910, it was twice heard in England. For many years Rachmaninov sanctioned a number of cuts in this score, but today these are no longer acceptable and the performance recorded here is complete. There has been a tendency to criticise Rachmaninov's music for a self-pitying vein: 'six feet of Russian gloom' remarked Stravinsky of him, in an oft-quoted aphorism. While it can be argued that the symphony is influenced by a 'fate' motto, the concept ultimately deriving from Tchaikovsky, the music itself is largely exuberant and finally optimistic in tone. Rachmaninov's seemingly endless lyrical extension of his themes in this score has the effect of exuding confidence. |
