Piano Sonata No. 1 (Rachmaninoff) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Piano Sonata No. 1, Op

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

. 28, is a piano sonata

Piano sonata

A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement , two movements , five or even more movements...

in D minor

D minor

D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. In the harmonic minor, the C is raised to C. Its key signature has one flat ....

by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

, completed in 1908. It is the first of three "Dresden pieces", along with Symphony No. 2

Symphony No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)

Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, created in 1906–07. The premiere was conducted by the composer himself in St. Petersburg on 8 February 1908. Its duration is approximately 60 minutes when performed uncut; cut performances can be as...

and part of an opera, which were composed in the quiet city of Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It was originally themed after Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

's tragic play, Faust
Goethe's Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: and . Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages...

, and although Rachmaninoff abandoned the idea soon after beginning composition, traces of this influence can still be found. After numerous revisions and susbstantial cuts made at the advice of his colleagues, he completed it on April 11, 1908. Konstantin Igumnov

Konstantin Igumnov

Konstantin Nicolayevich Igumnov was a Russian virtuoso pianist and the teacher of many famous Russian pianists.Igumnov studied under Nikolai Zverev, and at Moscow Conservatory under Alexander Siloti and Pavel Pabst. He took theory and composition courses from Sergei Taneyev, Anton Arensky and...

gave the premiere in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

on October 17, 1908. It received a lukewarm response there, and remains one of the more underperformed of Rachmaninoff's works.

It has three movement

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

s, and takes about 35 minutes to perform. The sonata is structured like a typical Classical sonata, with fast movements surrounding a slower, more tender second movement. The movements feature sprawling themes

Theme (music)

In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based.-Characteristics:A theme may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found . In contrast to an idea or motif, a theme is...

and ambitious climaxes within their own structure, all the while building towards a prodigious culmination. Although this first sonata is a substantial and comprehensive work, its successor, Piano Sonata No. 2

Piano Sonata No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)

Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36, is a piano sonata in B-flat minor composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1913. Rachmaninoff revised it in 1931, with the note, "The new version, revised and reduced by author." It has three movements:#Allegro agitato#Non allegro...

(Op. 36), written only 4 years later, became a much more enduring and regarded work.

Background

In November 1906, Rachmaninoff, with his wife and daughter, moved to Dresden primarily to compose a second symphony to diffuse the critical failure of his first symphony

Symphony No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)

Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13, is a music piece by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, written at Ivanovka, an estate near Tambov, Russia, between January and October 1895...

, but also to escape the distractions of Moscow

Moscow

. There they lived a quiet life, as he wrote in a letter, "We live here like hermits: we see nobody, we know nobody, and we go nowhere. I work a great deal," but even without distraction he had considerable difficulty in composing his first piano sonata, especially concerning its form. The original idea for it was to be a program

Program music

Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...

sonata based on the main characters of the tragic play Faust
Goethe's Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: and . Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages...

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

: Faust

Faust

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...

, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...

, and indeed it nearly parallels Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

's own Faust Symphony

Faust Symphony

A Faust Symphony in three character pictures , S.108, or simply the "Faust Symphony", was written by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and was inspired by Johann von Goethe's drama, Faust...

which is made of three movement

Movement (music)

s which reflect those characters. However, the idea was abandoned shortly after composition began, although the theme is still clear in the final version.

Rachmaninoff enlisted the help of Nikita Morozov, one of his classmates from Anton Arensky

Anton Arensky

Anton Stepanovich Arensky -Biography:Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine...

's class back in the Moscow Conservatory

Moscow Conservatory

The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

, to discuss how the sonata rondo form

Sonata rondo form

Sonata rondo form was a form of musical organization often used during the Classical music era. As the name implies, it is a blend of sonata form and rondo form.- Structure :...

applied to his sprawling work. At this time he was invited, along with Alexander Glazunov

Alexander Glazunov

Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...

, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...

, Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...

, and Fyodor Chaliapin, to a concert in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

the following spring held by Sergei Diaghilev

Sergei Diaghilev

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...

to soothe France–Russia relations

France–Russia relations

France–Russia relations date back to the early modern period.-History:France–Russia relations date back to early modern period, with sporadic contact even earlier, when both countries were ruled by absolutist monarchies, the Kingdom of France and the Tsardom of Russia...

, although Diaghilev hated his music. Begrudgingly Rachmaninoff decided to attend only for the money, since he would have preferred to spend time on this and his Symphony No. 2

Symphony No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)

(his opera project, Monna Vanna, had been dropped). Writing to Morozov before he left in May 1907, he expressed his doubt in the musicality of the sonata and deprecated its length, even though at this time he had completed only the second movement.

On returning to his Ivanovka estate from the Paris concert, he stopped in Moscow

Moscow

to perform an early version of the sonata to contemporaries Nikolai Medtner

Nikolai Medtner

Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer and pianist.A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano...

, Georgy Catoire

Georgy Catoire

Georgy Lvovich Catoire was a Russian composer of French heritage.-Life:He studied piano in Berlin with Karl Klindworth from whom he learned to appreciate Wagner. Catoire became one of the few Russian 'Wagnerite' composers, joining the Wagner society in 1879...

, Konstantin Igumnov

Konstantin Igumnov

, and Lev Conus

Lev Conus

Lev Eduardovich Conus was a Russian pianist, music educator, and composer. A brother of the composers Georgi Conus and Julius Conus, he studied together with Sergei Rachmaninoff in Anton Arensky's advanced composition class and served as chief professor of piano at the Moscow Conservatory until...

. With their input, he shortened the original 45-minute long piece to around 35 minutes. He completed the work on April 11, 1908. Igumnov gave the premiere

Premiere

A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...

of the sonata on October 17, 1908, in Moscow, and he gave the first performance of the work in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

and Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

as well, although Rachmaninoff missed all three of these performances.

Composition

The piece is structured as a typical sonata in the Classical period: the first movement is a long Allegro moderato (moderately quick), the second a Lento (very slow), and the third an Allegro molto (very fast).

Allegro moderato

The substantial first movement Allegro moderato presents most of the thematic material
Theme (music)
In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based.-Characteristics:A theme may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found . In contrast to an idea or motif, a theme is...

and motif
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....

s revisited in the later movements.

Juxtaposed in the intro is a motif revisited throughout the movement: a quiet, questioning fifth
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...

answered by a defiant authentic cadence
Cadence (music)
In Western musical theory, a cadence is, "a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of repose or resolution [finality or pause]." A harmonic cadence is a progression of two chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music...

, followed by a solemn chord progression
Chord progression
A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. In other words, the succession of root relationships...

. This densely thematic expression is taken to represent the turmoil of Faust's mind.
Lento

Although the shortest in length and performance time, the second movement Lento provides technical difficulty in following long melodic lines, navigating multiple overlapping voices, and coherently performing the detailed climax, which includes a small cadenza
Cadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....

.
Allegro molto

Ending the sonata is the furious third movement Allegro molto. Lacking significant thematic content, the movement serves rather to exploit the piano's character, not without expense of sonority. The very first measures of the first movement are revisited, and then dissolves into the enormous climax, a tour de force replete with full-bodied, masculine chords typical of Rachmaninoff, which decisively ends the piece in D minor.

Reception

Rachmaninoff played early versions of the piece to Oskar von Riesemann (who later became his biographer), who did not like it. Konstantin Igumnov

Konstantin Igumnov

expressed interest upon first hearing it in Moscow, and following his suggestion Rachmaninoff cut about 110 bar

Bar (music)

In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...

s.

The sonata had a mediocre evaluation after Igumnov's premier in Moscow

Moscow

. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

had died several months previously, and the burden of heading Russian classical music

Russian classical music

Russian classical music is a genre of classical music related to Russia's culture, people, or character. The 19th-century romantic period saw the largest development of this genre, in which major influences like The Five, a group of composers, emerged....

had fallen on this all-Rachmaninoff programme of October 17, 1908. Although the concert, which also included Rachmaninoff's Variations on a Theme of Chopin
Variations on a Theme of Chopin (Rachmaninoff)
Not to be confused with a work with the same title by Federico Mompou or Ferruccio Busoni's work of the same title.Variations on a Theme of Chopin , Op. 22, is a group of 22 variations on Frédéric Chopin's Prelude in C minor Not to be confused with a work with the same title by Federico Mompou or...

(Op. 22, 1903), was "filled to overflowing", one critic called the sonata dry and repetitive, however redeeming the interesting details and innovative structures were.

Today the sonata remains less well-known than Rachmaninoff's second sonata, and is not as frequently performed or recorded. Champions of the work tend to be pianists renowned for their large repertoire. It has been recorded by Alexis Weissenberg

Alexis Weissenberg

-Early life and career:Born into a Jewish family in Sofia, Weissenberg began taking piano lessons at the age of three from Pancho Vladigerov. He gave his first public performance at the age of eight. After escaping to what was then Palestine in 1945, where he studied under Leo Kestenberg, he went...

, Boris Berezovsky

Boris Berezovsky (pianist)

- Biography :Berezovsky studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. Following his London début at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as "an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power."In May 2005...

, Valentina Lisitsa

Valentina Lisitsa

Valentina Lisitsa is a Ukrainian-born classical pianist. Lisitsa resides in North Carolina in the USA. Her husband, Alexei Kuznetsoff, is also a pianist and her partner in a number of piano duets.- Biography :Lisitsa was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1973...

, Eteri Andjaparidze

Eteri Andjaparidze

Eteri Andjaparidze is a Georgian/American pianist and pedagogue. Born on September 15, 1956, to the family of musicians in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, Andjaparidze received her first piano lessons from her pianist mother Yvette Bachtadze. Her father Zurab Andjaparidze was the leading tenor with...

, Sergio Fiorentino

Sergio Fiorentino

Sergio Fiorentino was a 20th-century Italian classical pianist whose sporadic performing career spanned five decades.-Music career:...

, John Ogdon

John Ogdon

John Andrew Howard Ogdon was an English pianist and composer.-Biography:Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the Royal Northern College of Music between 1953 and 1957, where his fellow students under Richard Hall...

, Olli Mustonen

Olli Mustonen

Olli Mustonen is a Finnish pianist, conductor and composer.- Biography :He studied harpsichord and piano from the age of five with Ralf Gothóni and then Eero Heinonen. He studied composition with Einojuhani Rautavaara from 1975...

, Howard Shelley

Howard Shelley

Howard Gordon Shelley OBE is a British pianist and conductor. He was educated at Highgate School and the Royal College of Music...

(as part of his supposedly complete Rachmaninoff recordings for Hyperion Records

Hyperion Records

Hyperion Records is an independent British classical record label.-History:The company was named after Hyperion, one of the Titans of Greek mythology. It was founded by George Edward Perry, widely known as "Ted", in 1980. Early LP releases included rarely recorded 20th century British music by...

), and Idil Biret

Idil Biret

İdil Biret is a Turkish concert pianist, renowned for her interpretations of the Romantic repertoire.-Education:...

(likewise for Naxos Records

Naxos Records

Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...

). Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard (musician)

Leslie Howard AM is an Australian pianist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings...

also carries it in his repertoire.

External links

Piano.ru - Sheet music download Chubrik.ru - Audio download

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