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Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44 premiered on November 6 1936, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. The symphony does not follow the traditional four movement pattern. It is approximately forty minutes long.

Background

The national chaos – continual strikes, changes of government, and growing popular resentment to the Tsar - which affected Russia and culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, drove Rachmaninov to apply for a visa to leave the country. While he waited for it to be granted he re-wrote his First Piano Concerto. This was to be the last music he wrote on Russian soil, for in December he was eventually allowed to leave, going with his family first to Sweden, then Denmark and finally, in November 1918, arriving in the USA where he was to live for the remainder of his days. He may have lost all his belongings and money when he fled Russia, but he also seemed to lose his will to compose and from the day he arrived in America to the day of his death 25 years later, he wrote just four orchestral works – the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the Symphonic Dances and his Third Symphony.

Symphonies were tricky things for Rachmaninov. His First, premièred in St. Petersburg in 1897, was such a catastrophic disaster that he contemplated both suicide and abandoning composing altogether. In 1906 when he decided to write his Second he hid himself away in the German city of Dresden, confessing to "a mood of anguish, apathy and disgust at what I've been doing in my work". However that Symphony was a huge success and earned him the 20,000 ruble Glinka prize. The Third was written in exile by a composer desperately homesick but resigned never to be able to return home; as one commentator has put it, Rachmaninov "had come to terms with his new lot in life yet was still hankering inconsolably for the old." Little wonder then that the Third Symphony has been described as the "saddest piece of music Rachmaninov ever wrote." It was premièred on November 6 1936 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and, like the First, was not well received. This time Rachmaninov was accused of being an "anachronism – played out – saying only things he had said before but this time anaemically". The London-based Daily Telegraph described it cruelly as, "A palace without royalty. Rachmaninov still gives parties on the grand scale but no guests turn up."

Rachmaninoff composed his Third Symphony between June 1935 and June 1936, a few years after composing his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Variations on a Theme of Corelli, before which he had not composed for quite some years). He composed it while being at Villa Senar he built on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.

Movements

This symphony consists of three movements:

1. Lento - Allegro moderato - Allegro
2. Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro vivace
3. Allegro - Allegro vivace - Allegro (Tempo primo) - Allegretto - Allegro vivace.

1st Movement

Nostalgia and sadness permeate the whispered opening of this movement but then the orchestra shrugs off this mood of introspection and launches into a brave, dramatic march interrupted by the return of the haunting opening theme. This conflict between nostalgia and bravado, which is at the very root of the Symphony, is encapsulated in a rich, yearning theme from the cellos. This frequently works itself up to a climax which invariably ends on a deflationary note. The movement ends, as it began, in hushed tones, leaving the way open for a sorrowful horn solo answered by a solitary violin which introduces the 2nd movement.

2nd Movement

This movement suggests that Rachmaninov is here recapturing the Russian countryside of his youth, and certainly the pastoral air is heightened by bird-like trillings which surround the movement's delicate and nostalgic melodies. In the middle of the movement there is a sudden change of mood and speed and the music launches into an invigorating and energetic march which only serves to make the return of the pastoral music even more poignant and heart-wrenching.

3rd Movement

"Bravado" is the key word for the exuberant opening of this movement. Here the mood is almost forced, rather too impetuous for its own good, and when it all breaks out into a hyperactive fugue its eventual collapse into a state of nostalgic inertia seems inevitable. But in the end it is the mood of bravado which brings the Symphony to its exciting if slightly ambiguous conclusion.

Selected Recordings

1. Sergei Rachmaninoff conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded in 1939.
2. David Zinman conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, recorded May 1994.

References

• Mann, William. CD pamphlet: "Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 3, The Rock -- Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra / Paavo Berglund". RCA Victor. Recorded June 20-22, 1988, in Philharmonic Hall, Stockholm.

External links

• Notes to a performance of the symphony by the Milwaukee Symphony

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