2014 Program Notes, Book 9 47
Friday, August 8 and Saturday, August 9, 2014
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
(1906-1907)
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony is scored for piccolo, three
flutes, three oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet,
two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones,
tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is
60 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work
on August 27, 1937 with Hans Lange conducting.
Early in 1906, Rachmaninoff decided to sweep away the rapidly accumulating
obligations of conducting, concertizing and socializing that cluttered his life in
Moscow in order to find some quiet place in which to devote himself to composition,
a determination that may have been strengthened by the political unrest beginning
to rumble under the foundations of the aristocratic Russian political system. The
uprising of 1905 was among the first signs of trouble for those of his noble class
(his eventual move to the United States was a direct result of the swallowing of his
family’s estate and resources by the 1917 Revolution), and he probably thought it a
good time to start looking for a quiet haven. A few years before, Rachmaninoff had
been overwhelmed by an inspired performance of
Die Meistersinger
he heard at the
Dresden Opera. The memory of that evening and the aura of dignity and repose
exuded by the city had remained with him, and Dresden, at that time in his life,
seemed like a good place to be. The atmosphere in Dresden was so conducive to
composition that within a few months of his arrival he was working on the Second
Symphony, First Piano Sonata, Op. 6 Russian folk songs and symphonic poem
The
Isle of the Dead
. The Second Symphony was unanimously cheered when it was
premiered under the composer’s direction in St. Petersburg on January 26, 1908.
The majestic scale of the Symphony is established by a slow, brooding
introduction. A smooth transition to a faster tempo signals the arrival of the main
theme, an extended and quickened transformation of the basses’ opening motive.
The expressive second theme enters in the woodwinds. The development deals
with the vigorous main theme to such an extent that the beginning of the formal
recapitulation is engulfed by its surging sweep. The second movement is the most
nimble essay in Rachmaninoff’s orchestral works. After two preparatory measures,
the horns hurl forth the main theme. Eventually, the rhythmic bustle is suppressed to
make way for the movement’s central section, whose skipping lines embody some
of Rachmaninoff’s best fugal writing. The rapturous
Adagio
is music of heightened
passion that resembles nothing so much as an ecstatic operatic love scene.
Alternating with the joyous principal melody is an important theme from the first
movement, heard prominently in the central portion and the coda of this movement.
The finale bursts forth in the whirling rhythm of an Italian
tarantella
. The propulsive
urgency subsides to allow another of Rachmaninoff’s finest melodic inspirations to
enter. A development of the
tarantella
motives follows, into which are embroidered
thematic reminiscences from each of the three preceding movements. The several
elements of the finale are gathered together in the closing pages.
