An astonishing unleashing of notes

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) 
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30 (1909) 

In his autobiography Musical Stages, Broadway composer Richard Rodgers describes meeting with Sam Goldwyn outside the St. James Theater just after the Hollywood mogul had seen a performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s smash-hit Oklahoma!, then in its initial run. Goldwyn was blown away by the show. “I just had to see you to give you some advice,” Goldwyn bubbled to Rodgers. “You know what you should do next?” “What?” Rodgers answered. “Shoot yourself!” said Goldwyn. 

Sam Goldwyn had a point. After Oklahoma!, one might conclude that there was nowhere to go but down. Rodgers and Hammerstein recognized the enormity of the challenge and took their sweet time before writing another show together. That turned out to be Carousel, widely acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of the American musical theater. 

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1909 Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30 was his Carousel. It had the unenviable task of following one of the most popular concertos of all time, his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, written a decade earlier. Co-opted by all and sundry, played hither and yon, source of at least three popular song hits, Rach 2 is the one concerto your Aunt Penny is likely to recognize. 

So Rach 3 had a lot to live up to. Fortunately, it just might be Rachmaninoff’s masterpiece and even if it has never enjoyed the hit-parade bling of Rach 2, it gets the most respect from audiences, musicians, and particularly pianists, for whom that respect is typically mixed with fear. Rachmaninoff, one of the greatest pianists of them all, wrote it to give himself a thorough workout. Thus it has something of a decathlon about it. If Rach 2 was Tom Ewell’s midlife crisis concerto in The Seven-Year Itch, Rach 3 was David Helfgott’s nemesis in the biographical movie Shine. And of course it has had its detractors, such as New York Times critic Bernard Holland, who dissed it as “a cozy piece of schlock.” 

Critical brickbats have generally bounced off. Rach 3 marches on. It’s a massive, grandiose, Olympian concerto that challenges a soloist to heroic combat with an orchestra, a test not only of a pianist’s muscles but also of both mind and heart. To play the Rachmaninoff Third effectively requires as much tact and sensitivity as it does brawn and bravura. Big job, not impossible. Everest of the concerto repertory it may be, but it’s an Everest that has been surmounted by many a Sir Edmund Hillary. 

From the get-go there’s no question about who’s in charge. After the briefest of orchestral introductions, the piano enters with the primary theme, thereafter continuing to play for a mind-boggling 96% of the first movement’s approximately 370 measures. The soloist takes a break for the first phrase of the secondary theme, and that’s it. But what a first movement it is! A truly symphonic conception, it ranges from the murmuring folk-like melody at the opening to magnificent washes of arpeggios, thundering displays of athletic octaves, even Debussyean shimmers. And that’s just the piano part: the orchestra is by no means a disinterested bystander, but provides quite the sonic treasure-chest of its own, particularly via spectacularly effective writing for the winds. 

The second movement might be less epic but it has most of the best tunes, especially the langorous main theme, its dying fall eventually morphing into heroic abandon. The third movement follows without a break, and is – as we would expect – something of a highwire act, athletic and propulsive, suggestive of those high-flying Ukrainian hopak dancers in their bright red boots. In vintage Tchaikovskian (and Rachmaninoff-ian) fashion, the winsome secondary theme is elevated to headline status at the movement’s climax, rather like that scene in 42nd Street where Warner Baxter tells Ruby Keeler that she’s going out there a chorus girl, but she’s coming back a STAR. 

For much of its history, the supersized Third was deemed altogether too zaftig for comfort, resulting in many pianists and conductors subjecting it to cuts ranging from light trims to veritable chainsaw massacres. But these are different times, and nowadays such editing is viewed as sacrilege. So notwithstanding essayist Jean Kerr’s sparkling rant “I Don’t Want to See the Uncut Version of Anything,” nowadays we take our Rach 3 full-length and undiluted.

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) 
Symphony No. 3 (1946) 

Irony: a musical idiom indelibly associated with the United States is that of the Jewish son of Eastern European immigrants who received the bulk of his musical education in France. But that’s America for you. Although Aaron Copland was born in New York, his intense musical talent dictated that he would study overseas. Early 20th century America might have been the land of opportunity but it was a bleak wasteland for ambitious composers of concert music. From 1921 to 1925 Copland studied in France, broadening his musical horizons and acquiring a rock-solid compositional technique. 

Upon returning to his homeland Copland became a prime mover in the creation of a vibrant American musical voice, as he developed a vivid personal style that blended the sophisticated European modernism he acquired in France with native jazz and folk music. One sometimes hears that there were two Coplands – one modernist, the other populist – but it is more accurate to say that his language was flexible enough to serve a wide spectrum of compositions, from sparse contemporary statements to nostalgic evocations of an archetypal America. 

Copland’s Third Symphony has a musical godfather by way of the inimitable Serge Koussevitzky, long-time music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Festival founder, and indefatiguable champion of modern music. Posterity may thank Koussevitzky for Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Messiaens’ Turangalîla Symphony, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and a host of other modern masterpieces, not to mention Ravel’s wonderful orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Copland had been sketching ideas for a new symphony since 1944, and the arrival of Koussevitzky’s commission energized him to “focus my ideas and arrange the material I had collected into some semblance of order.” 

That “semblance of order” had its premiere by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony on October 18, 1946 and was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of symphonic art. Neither abstract modernism nor populist Americana, its distinctly ‘American’ qualities are relatively sparse, in that it incorporates neither folk music nor jazz elements. However, it does make spectacular use of Copland’s own Fanfare for the Common Man, written for the Cincinnati Symphony in 1942. Not only does an expanded version of the Fanfare feature in the symphony’s finale, but its characteristically angular contours and noble demeanor permeate the entire work. 

The Third Symphony is in three movements, although the two-part finale renders it more like four. Blockbuster it may be, but it doesn’t manifest as such at the opening. Unlike, say, the Beethoven Third, which slaps the listener into attention with two initial hammerblows, the Copland Third welcomes its audience graciously over the course of a lengthy sustained crescendo that reaches its peak then returns to lyrical introspection. Elegantly straightforward composer that he is, Copland presents his materials in plain guise, without unnecessary decoration or sonic clutter, thus rendering the occasional orchestral effect such as a cymbal crash or xylophone punctuations all the more striking. Copland gives individual players their spotlights throughout, including some wonderfully evocative passages for solo flute. However, the movement can be brash and burly as necessary, in places providing an impressive workout for an orchestra’s brass section. Nevertheless, it ends in the same quiet place from which it arose. 

For the second movement, Copland provides a scherzo – i.e., a jolly uptempo affair, almost de rigueur in symphonies from Beethoven onwards as the successor to the courtly or rustic minuets of Viennese Classicism. This particular scherzo cannot help but bring up thoughts of Copland’s beloved ‘Americana’ ballets such as Appalachian Spring or Billy the Kid, both written in the same general time frame as the Third Symphony. It certainly offers a bumptious ride in places, but it’s just as likely to settle into gently lilting folk-like melodies that may give the impression of simplicity but are actually rhythmically complex affairs requiring an ensemble’s utmost concentration. 

Then comes the massive two-part finale, surely one of the high points of American symphonic music. But it gives little hint at first of what’s about to happen; the overall character is shaded, introverted, wistful, even mournful at times, its decisively sparse orchestration enlivened by lyrical passages in the strings. (Sometimes it seems to be channeling Shostakovich in his somber adagio mode.) But then the mood lifts and the voice of optimism makes itself increasingly heard. With that comes Fanfare for the Common Man, an expansive expression of nobility, gleaming with with heroism and grandeur. A perfectly-paced, edge-of-the-seat finale follows, a lavish panorama of music ranging from tender to savage. Eventually the Fanfare reasserts itself to bring the symphony to an appropriately white-hot conclusion.