Sergei Rachmaninoff
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 in D minor, op. 30

“I firmly believe in what one might call piano music proper,” Sergei Rachmaninoff once stated in an interview. “So much has already been written for this instrument that does not suit its nature. … Rimsky-Korsakov is probably the greatest Russian composer; yet no one ever plays his concertos today because they are not pianistic. On the other hand, Tchaikovsky’s concertos are performed very often, because they fit the hands well.”

“Piano music proper” – this is precisely what Rachmaninoff composed in his third and final piano concerto, a work he preferred over his second contribution to the genre, despite its immense technical demands. Already at the premiere, one critic posed the justified question: “Who is afraid of Rachmaninoff?” The piece, composed in the summer of 1909 in Ivanovka near Uvarovo, was written for Rachmaninoff’s first American tour, which the composer, conductor and exceptional virtuoso began planning immediately after resigning from his posts at the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre: “I am toiling like a convict.” When Rachmaninoff set sail for the New World in October, he carried not only an enormous amount of luggage, but also a “silent keyboard”. The exceptionally demanding solo part of this “elephant concerto,” as he called it –  a piece completed at the very last moment – posed a real challenge even for a pianist of his extraordinary calibre. Of all the great piano concertos, “Rach 3” contains the highest number of notes per second in the solo part. Even the renowned Polish pianist Józef Hofmann, whom Rachmaninoff considered the greatest pianist of his time after Anton Rubinstein’s death, declined to play the piece dedicated to him. Yet its extraordinary demands go far beyond mere mechanical virtuosity – this arguably last great romantic piano concerto is also steeped in introspection and nuance. The melody in the opening bars, reminiscent of an ancient Russian liturgical chant, was meant, in Rachmaninoff’s own words, to “sing on the piano as a singer would.”

Undoubtedly, this classically structured three-movement concerto – marked by expressive cantabile lines, elegance, varied tonal colours, and striking contrasts – represents a pinnacle of Rachmaninoff’s entire œuvre. Already in the first movement, the piano cadenza — where the soloist, unaccompanied by the orchestra, demonstrates technical prowess — is divided by an interjection from the woodwinds and demands the utmost level of skill, both technically and physically. For this reason, the composer later provided a simplified and abridged alternate cadenza. Years passed before anyone other than Rachmaninoff himself was even capable of playing the concerto. Among the few who succeeded was Vladimir Horowitz, who added the piece to his repertoire in the 1920s and had soon mastered it better than the composer himself (Rachmaninoff noted that the rising star pianist evidently possessed the necessary “audacity” for the task). In 1939, Walter Gieseking was one of the first pianists to attempt the original version with the longer cadenza. The concerto’s true breakthrough came in 1958, when Van Cliburn performed the unabridged version at the Tchaikovsky Competition, securing its place in the standard repertoire of most pianists. In the second movement, the orchestra plays more than 30 measures of introduction before the piano enters, initiating a continuous dialogue between solo and tutti. The uninterrupted transition into the finale then sees Rachmaninoff once again giving free rein to his highly dramatic melodic sensibility.