Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No.3 -- Arcadi Volodos

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Ever since the days when genteel ladies swooned under the spell of Franz Liszt and superstitious Genoese averted their gaze from the "evil eye" of Nicolò Paganini, the great virtuoso performers have held a special place in musical history. It is not just a matter of right notes and wrong, nor even of fire and thunder. Today, most contestants in international competitions can boast a Liszt piece, a Rachmaninoff concerto, or a Paganini Caprice. What separates the great virtuosi from the rest is a mixture of dazzling technique and sensitive artistry, of power with poetry, and an almost mystical blend of those qualities that emphasizes each attribute.

The twentieth century produced a number of great virtuoso pianists, but the leading figures were both Russians: Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Vladimir Horowitz (1904-1989), whose careers often overlapped. History is repeating itself for, as the new century unfolds, Evgeny Kissin (born in Moscow in 1971) and Arcadi Volodos (born in St. Petersburg in 1972) have already established themselves as the most important pianists of their generation. Both combine breathtaking technical mastery with profound and eloquent musicianship, but Volodos, in particular, like his predecessors, has composed brilliant piano transcriptions that few contemporaries would dare tackle. He has also demonstrated that he is the undisputed master of showpiece works of Rachmaninoff and Horowitz. It is perhaps because he studied voice before concentrating on the piano that Volodos also displays a lyrical quality that is rare even among the greatest virtuosi. Throughout these performances, one hears the piano "singing" as the composer intended.

Ironically, Rachmaninoff never intended to be primarily a performer. At the age of twelve, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he met Anton Rubinstein, Arensky, Taneyev, and Tchaikovsky. While still a student, he composed the opera Aleko, and the Prelude in C-Sharp Minor followed shortly later, a work whose instant popularity came to haunt him. (In later years, when concert promoters insisted that he include it, he would stride onto the stage, thunder his way through the Prelude, then retire to his dressing-room for several minutes before returning to play the rest of the recital!) Balancing his life between composing and performing was always a challenge to him and was virtually impossible following the Russian revolution of 1917, when he became an exile, spending his time in Western Europe and America. Eventually, however, his enormous success as a pianist brought the financial rewards that insured comfort, still leaving time for composition. The outbreak of the second World War persuaded him to settle in America and make California his home. A somber giant of a man, whose left hand could reach over thirteen notes (nearly two octaves), his constant bouts of depression led to an early form of psychiatry with hypnosis, and his Second Piano Concerto (1901) is dedicated to the doctor who treated him.

The Third Concerto was composed in 1909 as a calling-card for his first American tour, and the composer, whose time was already strictly rationed between composing and performing, practised the solo part on a "dumb" piano while crossing the Atlantic. The tour included solo recitals, concertos, and conducting engagements on the East Coast as a prelude to the première of the Concerto with the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch on November 28, 1909. The following January, Rachmaninoff repeated it, this time with the New York Philharmonic directed by Gustav Mahler, who expressed enthusiasm for the score and insisted on exceptional overtime to prepare the orchestra.

Despite the high standards of his earlier works, it is in this concerto that Rachmaninoff's music rises to one of the pinnacles of his career. As a composer, his musical development did not undergo dramatic changes but evolved steadily, and the concerto reveals various features and technical combinations he had not used before, presented on a broad scale and with expansive melodic ideas. At the same time, the themes are always within the framework of the whole, achieving a greater unity than is to be found, say, in the more rhapsodic Second Concerto. Piano and orchestra always blend, and even in the cadenza -- traditionally the personal property of the soloist -- the piano joins forces with other instruments to maintain the overall plan. It has aptly been called a "Piano Symphony," and is one of the outstanding works in all concerto repertory. (There are, incidentally, two different first movement cadenzas, one shorter than the other. In his own historic recording, the composer favored the shorter, but it is possible that his decision was based on the practical problem of fitting all the material to the limited time requirements of a 78 rpm disc.)

Because Rachmaninoff composed in the tradition of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, there is a natural assumption that his themes are derived from traditional sources, but he denied this absolutely, writing to Joseph Yasser: "...The first theme of my Third Concerto is borrowed neither from folk song forms nor from church sources. It simply 'wrote itself'! If I had any plan... I was thinking only of sound. I wanted to 'sing' the melody on the piano... and to find a suitable accompaniment.... That is all!"

Apart from thematic ideas, the great technical skills required place the Third Concerto in a special class. The solo part is the test of any pianist, and the rich orchestration, with many solo instrumental passages, has the structure of a symphonic showpiece. The melancholy overtones that pervade so much of Rachmaninoff's music are very apparent, and this passionate sadness is perhaps the key to the emotional strength of the work and a reason for its powerful appeal. In later years, Rachmaninoff refused to play the concerto, proposing it instead for younger keyboard "lions" like Walter Gieseking and, more particularly, Vladimir Horowitz, whose name is almost as closely associated with the work as Rachmaninoff's own. It is therefore only appropriate that it should now pass to the newest member of the pride, Arcadi Volodos.

Throughout his career, Rachmaninoff wrote a wide range of shorter solo works that capture shifting moods and demand extraordinary keyboard skills. Arcadi Volodos has chosen a fine sampling of works from 1893 to 1940 (only three years before the composer's death). The Preludes and Études-tableaux offer both the extrovert fireworks and the Slavic melancholy that is never far below the surface, and whether it is the touching Romance of 1893/4 or the passionate F Minor Prelude of Opus 32, these miniature tone poems for piano evoke a wealth of emotions. True to the virtuoso tradition, Volodos includes here his own transcription of the Andante from Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata, Opus 19, a transcription he considers his best to date. And so it is -- a beautiful vocalise that lets the piano sing from the heart.

Paul Myers

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